UK Energy Minister Grant Shapps is set to meet with the heads of Britain’s biggest supermarkets and energy firms amid worries that waning competition is contributing to higher fuel prices for drivers.
Shapps will meet with the heads of grocers Tesco Plc, J Sainsbury Plc and privately-owned Morrisons and Asda, as well as oil & gas producers Shell Plc, BP Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp’s Esso on Monday over how they’re going to “fix” the situation, Shapps wrote in an article in The Sun newspaper published late Friday.
The UK is in the grips of a cost-of-living crisis with rising prices putting pressure on household budgets. In its bid to tame inflation, interest rate hikes from the Bank of England have driven up the cost of mortgages, adding to the pain.
There’s no end in sight yet for the inflation crisis, which is expected to last nearly another year, according to a recent report from Grant Thornton UK LLP. Prices seem stickier in the UK than in the US and parts of Europe, where inflation has started to subside.
Supermarkets have faced criticism that they’ve been profiteering from the higher food prices, and recently fielded questions from politicians on the issue. All the grocery chains highlighted that their profits have declined in the past year as they’ve tried to minimize price increases.
Read more: British Supermarkets Deny Food Price Profiteering to MPs
Shapps plans to ask the companies to sign up for the Competition And Markets Authority’s (CMA) scheme, whereby their pricing data can be shared with comparison apps and websites, something which the minister aims to turn into law.
Monday’s meeting follows a CMA investigation that found consumers had paid around £900 million ($1.14 billion) more for gasoline in forecourts operated by the UK’s biggest supermarkets last year, due to weakened competition.
The CMA said that grocers had increased their margins on gasoline by about 6 pence per liter between 2019 and 2022.
