No fuel shortage in Britain, says minister, as Reeves prepares to set out economic response to Iran war – UK politics live

No fuel shortage in Britain, says minister, as Reeves prepares to set out economic response to Iran war
Good morning. At lunchtime Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, will give a statement to MPs that will cover what the government is doing, and (more tentatively) might do, in response to the soaring global energy prices caused by the Iran war. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, also creating a global energy shortage, the Conservative government ended up spending £40bn supporting families and firms with energy bills over the following winter. Reeves’s problem is that she has not got £40bn spare. With spring upon us, and people starting to turn down their central heating, the issue may not seem particularly pressing in many households (although heating oil and petrol prices are already soaring.) But, by the end of this year, this could be the sort of colossal economic crisis that gets remembered for half a century.
As Chris Mason explains in a good preview, Reeves is expected to cover three points. She is expected to confirm that the government wants to give the Competition and Markets Authority new powers to deal with any potention profiteering by oil companies. She will confirm that the government wants to go “further and faster to secure the next generation of nuclear power and to reclaim Britain’s place as a leading nuclear nation” (as the Treasury puts it in its overnight preview).
And she is also set to set out some ideas about how the government might help households with energy bills if it thinks this is needed when the current energy price cap runs out at the end of June. What she won’t do is unveil a plan; it is too early for that. But Mason says she will “talk about the principles that will drive any further support to families if energy bills spiral in the coming months”, and she is expected to endorse the hints being dropped by Keir Starmer yesterday about any support package being targeted, not universal.
Michael Shanks, an energy minister, has been on the airwaves this morning taking questions ahead of Reeves’s statement, and he has stressed that there is no need for drivers to worry about a fuel shortage. He told Times Radio:
[Drivers] should do everything as absolutely normal because there is no shortage of fuel anywhere in the country at the moment. We monitor this every single day, I look at the numbers personally. There’s no issue at all with that …
People should go about their business as normal. That’s what the RAC and the AA have said. It’s really important people do that. There’s no shortage of fuel and everything is working as normal.
Asked if people should drive more slowly to conserve energy, Shanks replied:
Look genuinely, people shouldn’t change their behaviour or their habits in the slightest.
Ministers do believe there is no fuel shortage. But they are also saying this because they don’t want to say anything that might trigger panic buying.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet.
9.30am: Executives from X, Meta, TikTok and Google give evidence to the Commons science committee about misinformation on social media.
9.45am: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, launches his party’s local elections campaign in West Surrey.
Morning: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit meeting members of the Jewish community in Stamford Hill in north London.
11.30am: Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
After 12.30pm: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, makes a statement to MPs about the economic response to the Iran war.
Afternoon: MPs debate a Tory opposition day debate calling for the windfall tax on energy companies to be abolished, and for the ban on new oil and gas licences for the North Sea to be lifted.
2.30pm: Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, and Jenny Chapman, the development minister, give evidence to the Commons international development committee.
Afternoon: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is on a visit in Leeds where he is due to speak to the media.
And at some point today the business department is publishing a written ministerial statement giving an update on the goverment’s commitment to publish documents about how Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was appointed a trade envoy.
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