THE Transport Secretary has defended his foreign visa plans to solve the HGV driver shortage as he accused a haulage group of sparking petrol station queues.
Grant Shapps said the queues and closures at fuel stations were a “manufactured situation” created by the Road Haulage Association (RHA) leaking comments from BP bosses about supply concerns.
The Government announced a temporary visa scheme that will see 5000 HGV drivers and 5500 poultry workers brought in on three-month contracts to keep supermarket shelves stocked with turkeys and tackle fuel delivery difficulties.
The Petrol Retailers Association said panic buying had caused “serious problems” for stock levels, and “anywhere in between 50% and 90%” of its members’ forecourts had run out of fuel, with others “partly dry and running out soon”.
Shapps admitted he had done something he “didn’t necessarily want to do” in allowing foreign workers to fill the workforce gaps, having only on Friday rallied against the idea of temporary visas, but said the Government wanted to reassure the public amid long queues at the pumps.
Speaking to Sky News’ Trevor Phillips On Sunday programme, Shapps said: “We need to ensure that people are reassured now that this rather manufactured situation has been created, because there’s enough petrol in the country.”
Asked who manufactured the situation, he said: “There was a meeting which took place about 10 days ago, a private meeting in which one of the haulage associations decided to leak the details to media, and that has created, as we have seen, quite a large degree of concern as people naturally react to those things.”
He later told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show the briefings were “irresponsible”.
READ MORE: UK visa rush 'too little, too late' to save Christmas, Scots boss says
The Cabinet minister called for the public to be “sensible” and only fill up their cars when needed as there is “plenty of fuel” available.
Although Shapps did not name the RHA in his broadcast round on Sunday, the Mail on Sunday (MoS) quoted a Government source stating the Road Haulage Association was “entirely responsible for this panic and chaos”.
But Rod McKenzie, of the RHA, said: “The allegation against me is nonsense. I was not in the meeting. I was not briefed about the meeting afterwards. I certainly didn’t brief any journalists about the meeting about which I knew nothing.
“It is entirely without foundation.”
Meanwhile, Shapps told the MoS that Brexit was a “relatively minor contributor” to the shortage of truck drivers in the UK, despite the RHA estimating that Britain’s divorce from the European Union led to an exodus of 20,000 hauliers.
Pointing to shortages caused by the coronavirus pandemic elsewhere in Europe, the Transport Secretary told the BBC he was confident his offer of 5000 visas would ease the “100 to 200” shortfall of fuel tanker drivers, as he predicted the pump queues would start to “resolve” themselves partly due to the difficulty in stockpiling petrol.
But the boss of the European Road Haulers Association, which represents more than two-thirds of trucking companies across the EU, said he did not think the offer would send drivers flocking back to Britain.
General secretary Marco Digioia, who called Brexit the “number one” reason for UK sector vacancies, told the i newspaper: “Until the UK offers the same pay and working conditions as drivers have in the EU then many will stay away.”
And the Government’s plans to recruit overseas workers to help tackle the driver crisis has also been attacked by the leader of a trade union representing transport employees.
Mick Lynch, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT), said the Government was “going backwards” by “importing” labour from Europe.
He told a fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference in Brighton that people living in inner city communities across the UK which had been “left behind” should be recruited instead, but adding that it should be on decent pay and good working conditions.
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel