Asda owner to be grilled over petrol pricing

The media-shy billionaire who owns Asda is to be hauled in front of MPs amid a growing row over the price of petrol fuel pricing.

The Commons business and trade committee has written to Mohsin Issa about ‘apparent discrepancies’ between the supermarket’s chief commercial officer Kris Comerford’s evidence on prices last week and a Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) study published on Monday.

On June 27, Comerford claimed that Asda’s fuel pricing strategy policy had ‘not changed over many years’.

But on Monday the CMA found supermarkets, known for traditionally cheaper fuel prices, had sought to raise profits, increasing their margins by 6p per litre on average between 2019 and 2022.

Asda, Morrisons, Tesco and Sainsbury’s overcharged drivers by £900million in 2022, the CMA said, with Asda singled out for its profit-per-litre target for 2023 being three times what it had been in 2019. 

It was also hit with a £60,000 fine for failing to provide pricing details fast enough to the regulator.

The chairman of the cross-party committee, Darren Jones, said Comerford’s comment ‘does not accord’ with the findings, asking Issa to appear on July 19. 

He said MPs were also concerned about Asda’s response to fire-and-rehire tactics – where an employee is fired and then offered a new, potentially less favourable contract.

While Comerford said in the meeting that was ‘not something that Asda employs,’ letters from Asda and the GMB union suggest this could be inaccurate. 

The GMB said Asda had issued the threat of using fire and rehire – characterised by the company as ‘dismiss and re-engage’ – as ‘a last resort’ in its own letter.

It said: ‘If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is normally a duck. It is deeply unfair for Asda to cut pay during a cost of living crisis, even more so to use fire and rehire to achieve this.’

The supermarket was acquired by billionaire brothers Mohsin and Zuber Issa, who also own petrol forecourt empire EG Group, for £6.8billion.

Mohsin Issa said: ‘We have engaged fulsomely and openly with the business and trade select committee on grocery and fuel price inflation.

‘We are disappointed to hear it feels there are discrepancies in our evidence and have provided them with a detailed response to their letter requesting a further interview.

‘In fuel, we remain resolute that our strategy is to offer the best value for customers at the pumps – something that the CMA’s fuel market study confirms we continue to be.

‘While we cannot answer questions about how the market operates as a whole, I am happy to use time that had been previously agreed for me to meet with Jones directly for an open discussion, where I will be happy to reaffirm our strategy and commitments.’