Supermarkets are being given access to a sensitive database containing the details of 1.5 million of the country’s most vulnerable people to ensure they are able to get food.
There has been mounting concern that elderly and vulnerable people, who have been instructed to stay at home for their own safety during the coronavirus pandemic, are struggling to buy groceries as online delivery slots have been booked up for weeks in advance.
Sainsbury’s has already used its Nectar loyalty scheme to identify its elderly shoppers online and has contacted 270,000 of them. The supermarket said that its customer careline, where people can place orders over the phone, had also been overwhelmed with one year’s worth of calls in two weeks and 115,000 orders this week alone.
Supermarket bosses have urged shoppers who are well enough to visit their stores and leave online shopping for those who can’t leave their homes.
In a meeting with George Eustice, the environment secretary, it is understood that supermarket chiefs agreed to divide the database of vulnerable shoppers according to their share of the grocery market.
The supermarkets have said that they will start writing to customers on the database to offer them priority delivery slots but they are still waiting for the information. Mike Coupe, 59, Sainsbury’s chief executive, said the supermarket was “working hard to secure data on vulnerable consumers in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland”.
The Information Commissioner’s Office, which upholds consumer rights to personal data, said that the law enabled “data sharing in the public interest . . . The safety and security of the public remains our primary concern”.
One senior supermarket boss said: “We need to look after these people, they need to be fed and can’t get to the shops but we need a bit of help in being told where they are.”
The government has also instructed a coalition between wholesale rivals Bidfood and Brakes, which usually compete to supply the country’s restaurants and cafes with food, to supply special deliveries of free food for 50,000 vulnerable people, according to industry magazine The Grocer.
The supermarkets are also exploring ways to send small food parcels of essential goods through takeaway services such as Just Eat and Deliveroo.
