Ministers have announced plans to offer emergency visas to 5,000 HGV drivers and 5,500 poultry workers, in what businesses have dismissed as an “insufficient” attempt to tackle Britain’s fuel crisis.
However, the right for foreign lorry drivers to work in the UK will run out on Christmas Eve, triggering immediate criticism that the move will fail to halt the scenes of long queues at filling stations and fears of festive shortages.
The British Chambers of Commerce said the fix was “insufficient” and too short-term, while the British Retail Consortium said supermarkets alone needed 15,000 extra drivers for the Christmas season and that 5,000 visas would “do little to alleviate the current shortfall”.
It comes amid continued panic buying at petrol stations across the UK, which the chairman of the Petrol Retailers Association, Brian Madderson, told Sky News is “going to get worse before it gets better” – and suggested it could affect emergency services and other “really serious jobs”.
The president of the AA, on the other hand, described the supply problems as a “temporary blip” caused by panic buying rather than fuel shortages.
Long queues continued to form at forecourts across the UK on Saturday morning despite pleas from ministers and police, who urged motorists to be “sensible” to prevent exacerbate the situation.
Some of the largest UK operators have already started to ration fuel, with EG Group setting a limit of £30 per customer at nearly 400 stations, while pumps at some BP, Esso, Tesco and Shell sites were closed.
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