Data scheme can help end the fuel price rip-off from supermarkets: Graham Stuart

The CMA has now published its final market study report and I am shocked by its findings: rising fuel retail margins, and clear evidence of a rocket upwards and a feather downwards in the pricing pattern for diesel.

It is completely unacceptable that consumers have been paying more.

The financial impact of the 6p per litre increase, just in the fuel margin, from 2019 to 2022, cost customers of the four supermarket fuel retailers £900 million last year alone.

Asda’s fuel margin target was three times higher for this year than in 2019 and Morrisons doubled over the same period.

It is wrong that in a cost of living crisis drivers do not get a fair deal on fuel and end up being overcharged.

Motorists should not be used as cash cows by the fuel industry.

The Government will not stand for it.

Therefore, we accept the CMA’s recommendations in full.

We will create a statutory open data scheme for retail fuel prices and an ongoing road fuel prices monitoring function for the UK market.

We will consult on the design of the open data scheme and monitoring function as soon as possible this autumn, but that is not enough.

I have asked the CMA to have a voluntary scheme up and running by next month and I fully expect fuel retailers to share accurate, up-to-date road fuel prices.

The CMA will also continue to monitor fuel prices.

I demand that fuel retail bosses stop ripping off consumers, by making prices available so that the market can operate as it should.

Transparency is vital for competition and to keep prices down.

Liberal Democrat MP Tim Farron and the RAC are right to highlight the particular issue in rural communities such as those that he and, indeed, I represent, and the particular pressures on consumers there. What we need is a properly functioning market.

This is not just an issue in urban areas. However, in those areas there tends to be more competition and easier transparency than there can be in rural and coastal areas.

We have to make sure the market works.

Transparency is our biggest single weapon, and we need to be doing this in a way that reaches people, be they digitally enabled or not; we are wrestling with those details.

Let us look at the alternative to a market-based system – other countries have tried it, as it is a populist measure. It does not work, it leads to a shortage of supply and it ends up creating the very dominance that we seek to ensure is not exploited in systems such as we have seen in this CMA report.

I am determined to see the companies provide the data so that we have something far less clunky and far more comprehensive than what we have today.

Graham Stuart is Conservative MP for Beverley and Holderness and the Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero. This is an edited version of a recent Parliamentary speech.