End NHS contract with Palantir, campaigners insist after extension reports

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/nhs-palantir-yvette-cooper-shameful-gaza-genocide-big-tech

Ministers face mounting fury over plans to extend Palantir’s £330m NHS contract, with unions, doctors and MPs warning of threats to patient privacy and public trust

HEALTH Secretary Yvette Cooper was accused of a shameful dereliction of duty today following reports that the government will extend the NHS’s contract with Palantir, a tech company linked to the Gaza genocide.

Unions, medics and two Commons committees have urged ministers to axe the US firm’s contract to deliver the Federated Data Platform (FDP) AI system that connects medical notes across the health service.

Today, reports emerged that ministers will extend the firm’s £330 million contract while launching a procurement process for a British alternative, with Palantir potentially replaced in two years.

The company’s billionaire founder Peter Thiel — who has questioned the “compatibility of freedom and democracy” — has contracts to supply AI to the Israeli military and the US federal government as part of president Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s Lewis Backon slammed the “shameful” plans to hand “this disgraced company millions more pounds of public money.”

Palantir is “deeply complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people,” he said.

Labour’s decision to extend its contract is in “total contradiction” with Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband’s commitment that the British government will act against companies facilitating Israel’s illegal military occupation, he added.

Keep Our NHS Public co-chair Dr John Puntis warned that huge public opposition to the FDP contract relates to the unethical nature of the company, and lack of trust over data confidentiality.

It also involves concerns over “poor functioning software,” he added, which is worse than some in-house NHS systems, already resulting in low uptake by hospitals despite “constant misrepresentation of statistics purporting to show benefits.”

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