The major supermarket groups have all announced 3ppl cuts in the prices of unleaded petrol and diesel.

Asda was the first to move, setting its new national price cap at 119.7ppl on unleaded petrol and 131.7ppl on diesel on Thursday November 15.

Asda’s senior fuel buyer, Dave Tyrer, said: “Our new national price cap of 119.7ppl on unleaded and 131.7ppl on diesel will be welcomed by the millions of drivers across the UK. Further decreases in the wholesale market mean we are able to reduce our prices again, seeing our unleaded price dropped by up to 8ppl in just under two weeks.”

Morrisons and Tesco announced they were cutting up to 3ppl from diesel and unleaded petrol from Friday November 16, with Sainsbury’s carrying out the same cuts a day later.

The RAC welcomed the price cuts, but said they were overdue as the wholesale price of petrol has fallen sharply.

RAC fuel spokesperson Simon Williams added: “We will be monitoring the effect of these latest price reductions on the UK average price of petrol carefully. The last round of supermarket cuts purported to take up to 2ppl off unleaded, but RAC data shows that in reality just over a penny came off the average price of a litre of supermarket petrol – down from 127ppl to just 125.36ppl. We badly need the three other supermarkets to keep up with Asda and to fully participate in a meaningful ‘supermarket pump price war’. At the moment it’s sadly very much a cold war.”