Over the last four years I have been working to reduce the premium we pay locally for our petrol and diesel. Local fuel retailers regularly charge 7 pence more for petrol in Kidderminster, Stourport or Bewdley than they charge in Bromsgrove or Birmingham. There are various reasons why this happens and a less than thorough investigation was conducted into fuel pricing by the Office of Fair Trading a couple of years ago. That investigation came to the conclusion that there was no cartel operating with the retailers, but it failed completely to shine the light of transparency on the road fuel market. This means that we do not properly know why we pay these premiums locally, or the huge premiums that we pay in motorway service stations.
I have tried to meet with the retailers and just Tesco was prepared to meet - and were very helpful. And to be fair to them, they have responded on a temporary basis by reducing local prices, only to see them rising again later.
The truth is, local fuel retailers will charge what they can get away with. In a city such as greater Birmingham, there are a lot of petrol stations and there is healthy competition between car drivers and public transport, which is more efficient due to the density of population. The result is that fuel retailers will try to undercut each other. But for us in semi-rural Wyre Forest, we pay a premium that, to all intents and purposes, subsidises city dwellers. That is just plain unfair.
In Parliament, there are various mechanisms where backbenchers can try to get legislation through and one is known as the Ten Minute Rule Bill. I have won the opportunity to bring forward one such bill on the 20th of January and I will be proposing a bill that will remove, once and for all, the premium we pay in rural areas on our road fuel. Whilst maintaining competition between retailers, the bill will seek to equalise the price that a retail chain charges across the country. So Tesco, for example, can charge what they like in competition with Asda, but they have to have the same price nationwide. This has the support of campaigners Fair Fuel UK.
I have tried to get the retailers to voluntarily help us in rural areas. Now they need to be told what to do.