Fuel tanker firms and union set for Acas talks over strike threat

Fuel tankers standing at a Shell depot. Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA

Crisis talks between the Unite trade union and fuel distributors are due to begin on Wednesday, and William Hague said the government had done "absolutely the right thing" in urging the public to take precautions against a petrol shortage.

Representatives of fuel tanker companies will hold discussions with the Acas conciliation service on Monday over an agenda for the talks. If those discussions are successful, formal talks between the companies, Unite and fuel tanker drivers are pencilled in for the middle of the week.

Initial discussions are not expected to be face to face, in line with normal Acas procedures, but will be held with the parties in separate rooms in an attempt to maintain a positive atmosphere.

Hopes for an end to the dispute have been raised after a week in which panic over the threat of strikes led to petrol station closures, and a woman suffered severe burns while decanting petrol in her kitchen.

Sources close to the talks said an agreed agenda was crucial, with fuel distributors adamant that introducing national pay bargaining is not an option for discussion. Tanker drivers want common standards for safety and training, and an industry forum to oversee those issues. Unite has submitted nine points of discussion to Acas.

Unite has ruled out strikes over Easter and its driver members, who deliver fuel for 90% of the UK's petrol stations, cannot launch lightning strikes because of laws forbidding walkouts at less then seven days' notice.

Hague, the foreign secretary and Conservative deputy leader, defended the government's role during the petrol scare. He said on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: "I think my colleagues have done absolutely the right thing to urge people to take sensible precautions and I think they will be vindicated by events over the coming days and weeks."

On Sky News's Murnaghan programme, the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, said: "It is important for people to prepare. We have got to build resilience in the system and that's what we're doing. There is no need for anybody to panic, there is no need to be queuing at petrol stations."

Lansley dismissed reports that two Tory ministers had urged their colleague Francis Maude to resign after he broke from the agreed government line and encouraged people to stock up on petrol. "I have been on the receiving end of this kind of reporting and I think it's all nonsense frankly," Lansley said.

Conservatives continued to press Ed Miliband over his links with Len McCluskey, leader of the tanker drivers' Unite union, which has given more than ?5m to Labour in the last two years. A list of donor dinners published by Miliband on Friday shows he had dinner at his office or home with McCluskey eight times since he became Labour leader in 2010.

Hague said: "The solution to this is for the union in question to call off the strike, which is not in the interests of their industry, it's obviously not in the interests of the country as a whole. And it ought to be possible for all political leaders, including opposition leaders, to condemn the idea of a strike ? but because of their union paymasters they are, of course, reluctant to do so."

Unite sources dismissed claims by Andrew Spence, the haulier who led a crippling fuel blockade 12 years ago, that thousands of truckers were prepared to support a strike by tanker drivers. "That agenda is nothing to do with our campaign," said a Unite source.

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