Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what support and guidance they have provided to local authorities, volunteer groups and supermarkets to ensure efforts to provide food to vulnerable people are coordinated.

We are working closely with other Government departments and Local Government representatives to provide a coordinating and supporting function to support local authorities, supermarkets and the voluntary and community sector to provide access to food to vulnerable people.

To date we have arranged for considerably more than 500,000 food parcels to be delivered to the most vulnerable and at risk. We are working with major retailers to prioritise delivery and click & collect slots for those who are most vulnerable and at risk. We have shared with supermarkets the details of those who have registered as extremely clinically vulnerable and needing to shield, and who need help accessing food. Supermarkets have matched these names against their own customer databases and offered people the option of priority access to online delivery. Most supermarkets are also offering prioritised delivery or click and collect slots to those they have identified as vulnerable from their own customer database.

We are working closely with local authorities, retailers, food companies and charities to enable those vulnerable people outside the most vulnerable and at risk to access food through a variety of ways, including: volunteers shopping for them, deliveries from local retailers and food companies, as well as accessing supermarkets for a priority delivery or click and collect slot.

The NHS Volunteer Responders programme is available to help support people who are struggling to access food. In addition to health and care professionals, a number of approved Voluntary and Community Services organisations are now able to refer vulnerable individuals into the system to receive support from the volunteers. And we have been supporting the NHS with working with retailers on payment solutions for paying volunteers.