Boris Johnson claims the fuel crisis is “stabilising” following days of chaos, with long queues for petrol and stations running dry
Offering an update on the situation today, the prime minister said he understood the frustration felt by drivers as they struggled to fill up - but urged motorists to go about their business "in the normal way".
Indications from the industry were that the situation was beginning to improve with supplies returning to normal levels, he said.
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Speaking to reporters, Mr Johnson said: “I would really urge everybody to go about their business in the normal way and fill up (at petrol stations) in the normal way when you really need it.
“What we want to do is to make sure we have all the preparations needed to get through to Christmas and beyond, not just in supply for petrol stations but all parts of the supply chain.”
He told reports that the petrol shortages were “stabilising” and that supplies were coming back to forecourts.
“I want to say, first of all, how much I sympathise with people who’ve been worried about their journeys, worried about whether they’ll be able to use their cars in the normal way, to see their loved ones or whatever it is, and I know how frustrating, infuriating it must have been to worry about shortage of petrol or fuel," he said.
“We now are starting to see the situation improve; we’re hearing from (the) industry that supplies are coming back on to the forecourt in the normal way.
“I would just stress that on the forecourts the situation is stabilising and people should be confident and just go back to their business in the normal way.”
He said the recent scenes of panic buying followed a “slightly misleading” account of the shortages of lorry drivers which caused an “understandable surge in public demand”.
The actual number of lorry drivers that we’re short in that particular sector isn’t very big. But generally there is a shortage in that profession around the world," he said.
“And what we want to see is an emphasis on high wage, a high-skill, a high-productivity approach to our economy.
“What I don’t think people in this country want to do is fix all our problems with uncontrolled immigration. Again, we tried that for a long time – 20 years or so, perhaps longer.
“And in the end, people could see that it was leading to a low-wage, low-skill approach without enough investment in people or in equipment, in capital. And that’s not the way we want the UK to develop and grow.”
His appeal came as Sir Keir Starmer accused the government of reducing the country to “chaos” through its failure to deal with the fuel crisis.
The Labour leader said the haulage industry was “beyond frustrated” at the lack of a clear plan by ministers to alleviate the problems caused by the shortage of tanker drivers.
“The government has reduced the country to chaos as we track from crisis to crisis. The government is not gripping this,” he told BBC News.
“This problem was predictable and predicted and the government has absolutely failed to plan.”
The government announced on Monday it was putting troops on standby to drive petrol tankers as filling stations in many parts of the country continued to run dry.
Transport secretary Grant Shapps said that ordering troops to begin preparing to take on deliveries was the 18th separate measure take by the government since the spring to alleviate pressure on supplies.
However he acknowledged that Brexit had “no doubt” been a factor in the current problems with a continuing shortage of lorry drivers.
Mr Shapps said there were the first “very tentative” signs that the situation was beginning to stabilise, but he admitted that it would take time before the pressure on the forecourts began to ease.
“There are now the first very tentative signs of stabilisation in forecourt storage which won’t be reflected in the queues as yet,” he said.
“But it is the first time that we have seen more petrol actually in the petrol stations.
“As the industry said yesterday, the sooner we can all return to our normal buying habits, the sooner the situation will return to normal.”
The chairman of the Petrol Retailers Association (PRA), Brian Madderson, said that while demand was down from the “extreme” levels seen at the weekend, it was still “well above the norm”.
