They will also discuss scenarios including blockades of petrol forecourts in the UK, a terrorist attack on oil refineries and cuts in supply from the Middle East.”This is a routine contingency planning exercise which happens two or three times a year,” said a DTI spokesman. “It happens to involve members of the oil and petrol industry. They will be discussing oil disruption of some kind and will look at various scenarios.”Meanwhile it emerged yesterday some petrol stations are charging as much as a pound a litre. The AA Motoring Trust said the average price of a litre of fuel on Britain’s forecourts had hit 81.3p and was rising.”We have had reports of some pump prices charging a pound a litre and one in the North-west charging 109p a litre,” a spokesman said.As world crude prices continued to hit levels not seen since the first 1990-91 Gulf War, UK petrol prices looked set to breach the 85p a litre mark that triggered protests in 2000, which brought the country to a virtual standstill. Yesterday the Road Haulage Association unveiled plans by Scottish hauliers to hold a demonstration in Edinburgh next month.”The members within my region are suffering like never before,” said Phil Flanders, RHA’s Scotland and Northern Ireland director. “Operators are now working to the tightest possible margins – making even a small profit on a job will soon be a thing of the past.” Freight groups are angry at Government plans to impose a rise in the level of fuel duty on 1 September that would add almost 2p to a litre of fuel.

The Freight Transport Association said the increase alone would cost UK industry £250m a year.The hike was postponed in the Budget to allow new non-sulphur fuel to gain a foothold. It was delayed last year because of volatile oil prices in the run up to the Iraq war.. Political activists fighting the British National Party in next month’s local and European elections were focusing yesterday on its new weapon – female candidates. Traditionally, the party’s candidate lists have been dominated by working-class men.

But this time there is a 58-year-old Jewish woman, Patricia Richardson, standing in Epping Forest and the eastern region; and Julie Russell, 24, whose degree in German, Italian and international studies has not disabused her of the notion that Britain “has lost its identity”.Some of the BNP’s election boasts may be bluster – eight of the 22 candidates it promised to field in Calderdale have stood down. One has close relatives of Asian extraction and became uncomfortable about the party. But the BNP is using its women judiciously, fielding some on male-dominated shortlists.Ms Richardson dismisses her party chairman’s description of the Holocaust as, “the hoax of the 20th century”, claiming the BNP no longer espouses such a view. “They would not ask me to stand if they felt that way,” she said.Other members of the BNP’s female contingent appear to be equally “off-message”.

One of the Barnsley candidates, Lorraine Lee, 37, a mother of two, said that the idea of repatriating people of overseas extraction – a BNP policy – was “dreadful” She said: “You can’t do that to people. Many of them have come here because they have asked for our help and support. You can’t just turn around and send them back.”The same distaste led one of the BNP’s eight Burnley councillors, Maureen Stowe, 65, to leave the party earlier this year. “I didn’t like the meetings or the messages,” she said.Phill Edwards, a BNP spokesman, said Ms Lee – who stands in Barnsley’s Rockingham ward after being nominated by 10 other party members – had been “misunderstood”.The female candidates will be asked to propound the BNP’s “family values” policy – that women should stay at home to look after the children. “We hope it will prove that we are not all pot-bellied skinhead with tattoos,” said Mr Edwards.Among the other women the party is fielding are Terrie Rentoul, who is standing in Southampton; Suzie Cass, who is standing in Ossett, west Yorkshire and whose husband, Nick, is a Euro and Kirkless candidate and Jenny Agnew, an ex-Green who is number three on the Euro list for the North East.In Calderdale, the candidates include Jane Shooter, 35, a mother of three who works at a printing company. The local party, which has three seats, is fielding 14 candidates. It may benefit from the fact that the Tory-led hung council lacks unity.