Filling a tank

FairFuelUK (FFUK) has received more than 15,000 signatures of support in the past day backing its call for an investigation into the UK fuel market.

FFUK wants the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to take the issue on, after a report commissioned for G20 finance ministers warned oil traders may have been artificially inflating wholesale prices.

It also wants the financial regulators to look at whether traders and speculators have, in the style of the banks and the Libor rate, “fiddled” the benchmark trading price for oil.

It comes a day after Robert Halfon MP gave a speech in the House of Commons calling for greater transparency in the price of fuel (17 July). During the debate, Martin Vickers, MP for Cleethorpes, made the point about just how much hauliers in his constituency were suffering as a consequence of the high price of fuel.