Asda owners rapped by MPs over reluctance to open up on fuel prices and jobs

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Asda executives were accused of damaging the company’s brand after an “extraordinary” meeting with MPs at which they were reprimanded for not “complying” with a string of questions.

Mohsin Issa, co-owner of the supermarket chain, and Hayley Tatum, chief people and corporate affairs officer, were called before the parliamentary business and trade committee to answer concerns about the company’s fuel pricing and employment strategies.

However, after over more than an hour of evidence in which MPs repeatedly asked questions they felt had gone unanswered, Darren Jones MP, Labour chair of the committee, said: “Might I say this has been quite an extraordinary session — not in the way that I hoped it would have been.

“What we have heard today is that prices are up at Asda, tax is down, pay is down, money is being taken through a very complicated set of business structures to offshore companies, and you’ve not answered any of our questions.

“I am very sorry we have spent an hour going round in circles and you have not been complying with the questions from this committee — it’s not in order and I think you have suffered to the detriment for the brand of Asda to your customers and to your suppliers [sic].”

He said the committee “reserved the right” to call the pair again, and would also be looking for responses to written questions.

Mohsin Issa and his brother Zuber bought Asda in 2020, in what was the biggest leveraged buyout in a decade.

In May this year, Asda bought 350 petrol stations from sister business EG Group, to create a group comprising 700 petrol forecourts. Both Asda and EG Group are co-owned by the Issas and TDR Capital, a private equity firm.

Issa’s committee appearance follows an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority watchdog into Britain’s retail fuel market, prompted by concerns about high prices in the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

The CMA’s report, published on July 3, found that competition in the market had weakened, and retailers’ margins had risen significantly, with supermarkets’ average annual fuel margin climbing from 4.6p per litre in 2019 to 10.8p per litre in 2022.

It said Asda had in 2021 increased its margin targets, with its pence-per-litre target by 2023 three times what it had been in 2021.

Issa did not acknowledge that the company’s approach had changed, repeating several times that the company’s strategy was to be a price leader and that this “remains unchanged”.

Pressed over concerns raised by the GMB Union that Asda has threatened to “fire and rehire” workers as part of planned pay changes, Tatum said no decisions had been made.

“We don’t know whether we will end up in a fire-and-rehire position,” she said. “It is a last resort . . . it’s not a threat — all other options are there as well.”

After the end of the committee session Asda argued in a statement that “the presence of an Asda petrol station in a local area keeps prices down for all motorists” and added its annual profits were hit as it absorbed some food price inflation.