Any Other Business: £750 million extra at Tesco’s petrol pumps? There’s a hint for you, Chancellor

The most startling number in this week’s news was the extra £750 million spent on petrol by Tesco customers in the six months to August, compared with the same period last year. This wasn’t some Clarkson-esque craze for seeing off the downturn blues by taking the motor for a spin, but the inflationary impact of higher oil prices and fuel duties. As Tesco chief executive Phil Clarke observed, ‘That’s £750 million that could be spent in shops or paying off credit cards.’ Not surprisingly, like-for-like sales in his stores were at their most dismal since the recession of 1992.

But at Morrisons and Sainsbury’s, the year-to-date numbers are up a fraction. Clarke’s opposite number at Sainsbury’s, Justin King, says his customers are managing tight cash flows by changing their shopping patterns but that overall there’s ‘much too much doom and gloom’. Maybe he’s right, and maybe there’s a clue in this as to how the Chancellor could make a difference at modest cost to the Treasury. Petrol pump prices have been steady through the summer and the oil-price trend has been downwards since April — from well above $120 per barrel to around $105. That’s still high relative to the stagnant state of the economy, but the end of the Libyan conflict gives hope of further easing. And food prices are also on the turn: the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s index of food commodities fell to 225 last month having peaked at 238 in February. Add a supermarket discount war to these underlying shifts, and consumers might just start to feel more cheerful — at least that’s what retail analysts are predicting.

But it is the painful price of fuel (a penalty of more than £500 per year for the average family, according to UBS analyst Mike Tattersall, quoted in the FT) that ought to catch George Osborne’s eye as he drafts his autumn statement.