Business livid with Chancellor over gasoline ‘profiteering’ blame sport | Politics | News | EUROtoday

The Chancellor discovered herself beneath hearth from a number of instructions final evening — with senior enterprise figures, the chief of the opposition and petrol retailers all lining as much as accuse Rachel Reeves of being the actual profiteer in Britain’s gasoline disaster.

The assault landed at a fragile second. Downing Street had spent weeks pointing the finger at forecourt operators, with each the Prime Minister and the Chancellor suggesting it was retailers — not the Treasury — who had been squeezing drivers. The enterprise neighborhood’s response has been to show that argument on its head.

Their case is easy: each time pump costs rise, the Government’s haul from VAT and gasoline responsibility rises with it. The retailers’ margin stays mounted. The Chancellor’s doesn’t.

Lord Wolfson attracts a line

Chairman Lord Wolfson reportedly put the demand from trade in plain phrases.

“I think a reasonable ask from our industry – and in fact all industry – is that the Government doesn’t end up profiting from it,” he’s understood to have mentioned.

“That would be a very reasonable ask to say to the Government: “Don’t really earn more money out of this than you had been anticipating’.”

Badenoch goes on the attack

The Conservative leader made her entrance at a fuel industry event aboard a Fuel Britannia-branded tanker — a piece of theatre designed to underscore her solidarity with forecourt operators who feel they have been made scapegoats, reports the Daily Mail, which outlined how she demanded an apology from Labour after it became clear the evidence for price gouging by petrol firms was thin at best.

She reportedly said forecourt bosses were ‘working hard, getting up early. They’re being taxed to the hilt.

“They’re being blamed for gasoline responsibility worth rises. Where really it is Rachel Reeves who’s doing the value gouging.”

Speaking separately at a West London building site, Badenoch broadened her attack — accusing Labour of driving ahead with economic policies she described as ‘impoverishing households, families and businesses.’

“It’s time to scrap the foolish tax rise which Rachel Reeves is placing on gasoline responsibility. It is time to get Britain working once more,” she said.

Who is actually making the money

The RAC puts the current retailer margin at six per cent per litre — a figure that has remained largely stable. The Government’s position is quite different. Fixed fuel duty stands at 52.95p on every litre sold, and because VAT is charged at 20 per cent on the total pump price, every penny of price inflation feeds directly into Treasury receipts.

War-driven price rises have added roughly 15p to the cost of a litre of petrol and 30p to diesel since hostilities began. One analysis published this week put the additional burden on British motorists at more than £300 million.

Fuel duty increases of 1p, 2p and 2p are scheduled for September, December and March 2027 respectively — a pipeline of rises Labour has shown no appetite to reverse.

The Downing Street standoff

Behind the public war of words lies a messier private confrontation. The Government called petrol companies and energy suppliers to Downing Street and told them directly to stop overcharging. Forecourt operators walked out of the first meeting, offended by the confrontational framing coming out of Whitehall, before eventually being talked back to the table.

Former BP executive Nick Butler put a stark timeline on the situation yesterday — warning that oil and gas shortages could materialise within two to three weeks. On the same day, a Tesco store in Worcester sold its last drop of fuel, states the report.

The Express understands government ministers maintained that drivers had no reason to alter their behaviour and that contingency planning for blackouts or rationing was not underway.

Reform and M&S add their voices

Reform’s treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick demanded Reeves cut VAT on petrol by half for a three-month period.

“She’s making tens of tens of millions of kilos every week in further tax income as a direct results of the warfare; the least she might do is reduce the blow,” he said.

M&S chief Stuart Machin took a different but equally pointed angle — targeting the green levies embedded in energy bills that he said bore no relationship to the underlying cost of oil or gas.

Those policy costs, he said, had become “simply not sustainable” — having ballooned to account for more than half of M&S’s total energy bill.

“Over the previous few years the ‘coverage prices’ on our power invoice have sky-rocketed,” Machin wrote on LinkedIn. He saved his sharpest words for Labour’s employment levies — branding them as “letting down a era of youngsters.”

A Treasury source reportedly said: “We took motion exactly to stop firms exploiting this disaster – and in the event that they do, we are going to clamp down on it – as a result of Labour is on the aspect of working individuals.”