Keir Starmer has accused Boris Johnson of reducing the country to “chaos” through his 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.
He called on Boris Johnson to give key workers priority access to fuel supplies to ensure they could still get to work as filling stations ran dry.
Speaking in Brighton at the Labour conference, Starmer said: “The Government has reduced the country to chaos as we track from crisis to crisis and the Government is not gripping this.”
“I spoke to the haulage sector this morning, to the businesses that are absolutely in the middle of this, and they are beyond frustrated."
Starmer added: “They said it’s a Government that is denying there’s a problem, then blaming somebody else, and then coming up with a half-baked plan.”
The Labour leader echoed the doubts of the haulage industry that the Government’s plan to issue 5,000 three-month visas to foreign lorry drivers to make up for the shortage of truckers would work.
Starmer said there was a “strong view” that they would need to be for at least six months if they were to tempt sufficient numbers to come to the UK."
He said: “The Prime Minister should take that action today, prioritise key workers and start issuing enough visas and for long enough."
“The strong view this morning was that three months visas won’t work, they’ve got to be six months visas.
“But this problem was predictable and predicted and the Government has absolutely failed to plan.”
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