The Chief Minister explained that while rises were significant, the freight surcharge is lower than in previous years. <\/p>\n
He said: “We are taking this very seriously. Price increases of this level do impact costs.” <\/p>\n
Members pressed the chief minister to give assurances to vulnerable households that they would be given support, ahead of an update from Treasury in April’s Tynwald sitting. <\/p>\n
Cannan said the government planned to target help where it is needed most, particularly for people relying on heating oil. <\/p>\n
He also highlighted the unpredictability caused by the war in the Middle East, noting that oil prices could fluctuate rapidly.<\/p>\n
Cannan said a new group, including business leaders and ministers, had been created – to track how families and companies were being affected.<\/p>\n
Plans are also in place to make sure essential services are kept running and fuel remains available, he said.<\/p>\n
Other members, such as Ramsey MHK Lawrie Hooper, suggested revisiting measures used during the Covid pandemic, when fuel surcharges were temporarily fixed to reduce sudden price spikes. <\/p>\n
Cannan said while all options were being considered, the current fuel surcharge was lower than the 2022-23 peak. <\/p>\n
But he stressed households and businesses must prepare for further uncertainty, with the future of the conflict in the Middle East still unknown.<\/p>\n
“We just simply don’t know. It could end in two days, it could end in two years,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chief Minister explained that while rises were significant, the freight surcharge is lower than in previous years.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-506073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}