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Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots, a spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Katie Bawes

and I'm joined by Isabel Hardman and James Forsyfe. Now I've had a fortnight of various shortages

and now we're on to petrol. James, we're hearing from the Transport Secretary that people

should not rush to fill up with petrol.

Why is he sending that message? Because BP yesterday had to close some of their full courts,

because they couldn't, not because there's a shortage of petrol, but because there's a shortage of HGV drivers, and so they couldn't get the petrol delivered to their stations. Now,

this is one of these situations where telling people not to panic is one of those

things that makes people inclined to go and fill up their car just in case.

And I mean this is one of the dangers for the government is that throughout, there are undoubtedly

supply chain crunches at the moment.

There is undoubtedly a shortage of lorry drivers. Just look at how starting salaries were offered for HGV drivers

keeps going up. You know, but there's waitress offering 54,000 a year. There's

talk this morning that one dairy distributor is considering going as high as

78,000 pounds a year for an HGV driver. And one of the problems of the

government, though, is that if people

see shortages, they buy more. Think, you know, toilet and toilet roll and COVID. And that, I think,

is a danger for the government. I think there's particular danger on petrol. And there's also a

broader danger about Christmas shortages. You know, that if people keep hearing that Christmas is in danger from the lack of

lorry drivers and this general, the broader supply chain crunch, that people start

panic buying and that has a knock on effect and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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