Personal Account

The virus is being used as an excuse to justify intolerable snooping into our lives and our finances

Like many people I made a long- overdue trip to the pub this week to celebrate the latest round of lockdown easing. A muchneeded haircut will soon follow. But while I sat down to enjoy a pint, others were not so lucky.

David Walters, 78, was looking forward to a drink at his local, the Angel in Corbridge, Northumberland, but was refused service because he did not have a smartphone. Unable to access the app needed to place an order, Mr Walters was told to take his business elsewhere. MPs and campaigners have rightly warned that older, disabled and vulnerable people are increasingly at risk of discrimination as we emerge from lockdown. Age UK said half of people aged between 65 and 74 did not have a smartphone, rising to 70pc among the over-75s.

There are also plenty of younger people who cannot, or prefer not to, live their life via a mobile device.

Yet the idea of giving individuals a choice is disappearing. There are countless examples where the camouflage of coronavirus-related safety measures has been used to justify tactics that would be unacceptable at any other time: forcing shoppers to pay in a certain way, normalising poor customer service or demanding intrusive amounts of personal information.

This has particularly affected the financial aspects of our lives. There are hundreds of cafés and shops where you can no longer pay in cash, even though there is no proven link between banknote usage and Covid-19.

We are pushed towards clunky websites when a quick phone call would often do the job in half the time. If you are lucky enough to find a phone number, you have to be prepared for a long wait on hold, as financial firms blame the virus for a lack of staff. Branch opening hours have become so limited that you wonder if banks want your custom at all.

But this is more than a gripe about call centre queues: many people are finding themselves being excluded from everyday life altogether. Hard-won civil liberties are being eroded under the cover of Covid. As Telegraph Money reports today, letting agents have started to demand access to huge amounts of sensitive financial information before they will agree to let properties.

It is understandable for landlords and agents to want to ensure tenants can afford to pay the rent, especially at a time when many landlords have seen their income dry up as renters have lost their jobs. Yet agents want to use socalled “Open Banking” technology to snoop on every single transaction you make, when ability to pay is easily demonstrated by a wage slip or a basic bank statement. Forcing you to hand over information about every aspect of your financial life, right down to how much you paid for your haircut or how many pints you enjoyed in the pub, is surely overstepping the mark.

Life is slowly returning to normal, but I fear some of these Covid-related encroachments on our lives will take years to be reversed, if at all. We all hope the country will bounce back quickly from the devastating impact of the virus, but we cannot normalise actions that often exclude the very people we have spent the past year trying to protect.

Bank branch hours are now so limited you wonder whether they want our custom at all