The health secretary wants to keep us in the dark about Palantir’s systems for handling sensitive health records, so we’re taking legal action with Democracy for Sale to fight back
As Palantir’s global surveillance empire expands, Wes Streeting is building a fortress of secrecy around the firm’s £330m NHS contract. The health secretary is currently refusing to publish vital briefing documents sent to Streeting and health minister Karin Smyth – papers that will provide the truth about the risks of Palantir’s data platform.
Streeting’s team argues that he doesn’t have to publish this material because it was used for “policy development”. But this is not a speculative proposal – Streeting is already rolling out Palantir technology across the NHS. He’s asking the public to accept vague reassurances while denying us access to the facts on the ground.
This secrecy is even more alarming given Palantir’s track record. Doctors and the British Medical Association have warned against handing sensitive health infrastructure to a company with deep ties to defence and intelligence agencies. Palantir’s role in Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza has sparked a public backlash. And unease also appears to be growing within government as well, with the Financial Times reporting that ministers are exploring whether they can trigger a break clause in Palantir’s contract.
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This isn’t the first time the health department has tried to keep its business with the tech giant behind closed doors. When the government first published Palantir’s contract, 417 out of its 586 pages were completely blanked out. We fought for greater transparency – and won. Now the fight continues.
NHS staff blockade the entrance to NHS England’s headquarters in central London demanding the cancellation of its contract with Palantir, which campaign groups say supplies advanced technology to Israel’s military, April 3, 2024
US tech giant granted ‘unlimited access’ to patients’ data
HEALTH union reps, public ownership campaigners and Amnesty International UK demanded the NHS “cease all contracts with Palantir” today after the US tech company was granted “unlimited access” to patients’ data.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting was urged to reconsider a “staggering decision” to grant external staff from firms including Palantir access to patients’ identifiable data while working on its flagship platform.
An NHS England internal briefing note published today by the Financial Times said it would create an “admin” role which “permits unlimited access to non-NHS England staff” to the National Data Integration Tenant (NDIT) and identifiable patient data within it.
The NDIT is a part of a larger tool made to aggregate disparate NHS data into a single system called the Federated Data System, which earned Palantir a £330 million government contract in 2023.
As well as the controversial US tech firm, access to patients’ data could be given to any other outside firm contracted to work on the Federated Data System.
Previously, access to sensitive information required individuals working on the NDIT to apply for permission for specific data sets, the FT reported.
All-round access was initially meant to be reserved for NHS England employees with security clearance.
London mayor speaks out against ‘firms who act contrary to London’s values’.
Sadiq Khan could block the Metropolitan Police from signing a huge AI contract with tech giant Palantir, citing concerns about spending public money on “firms who act contrary to London’s values”.
Palantir, which provides software to ICE and the Israeli military, showcased its systems to Scotland Yard intelligence officers last month, hoping to land a contract worth tens of millions of pounds, the Guardian reported.
While the Met has its own procurement team, the London mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime must sign off any contract worth over £500,000, giving Khan some leverage over the deal.
A spokesperson for the mayor said: “We can’t comment on live procurement processes. However, as a general point the mayor would have concerns about using public money to support firms who act contrary to London’s values.”
Palantir, which was founded by US billionaire Peter Thiel, currently holds more than £600m of contracts with public bodies in the UK. Those include a £240m deal with the Ministry of Defence, a £330m contract with the NHS, and agreements with various city councils and local police forces.
Palantir, a US data analytics company backed in its early years by In-Q-Tel, now plays a central role in the NHS’s £330 million Federated Data Platform. Supporters say it could improve planning and efficiency, while critics have raised questions about governance, transparency and trust. Here’s what you need to know.
1. What is Palantir and what does it do?
Palantir is a large American technology company, specialising in storing large data collections and providing tools to manage the data, in particular artificial intelligence (AI) to ask questions of it. It provides decision-making platforms, such as Foundry, which government organisations and businesses use to uncover patterns, manage operations, and support planning and decision-making.
2. Why is a private American company involved in managing NHS medical records?
That’s not how Palantir views it. It sees itself as providing a platform on which the NHS can store and analyse NHS medical records. And that wouldn’t be exceptional. A large amount of data from across society is stored on cloud platforms provided by American companies.
Some of the discussion is about whether Palantir is really less trustworthy than, say, Microsoft, Google or Amazon.
3. Who gave Palantir this contract, and was it put out to open tender?
Palantir had been lobbying to get access to NHS data for a while when it offered to build a COVID data store for £1 in early 2020; there was no open competition under emergency COVID procurement rules. The data store combined patient-level data from many sources, as well as operational data from hospitals and other sources.
The latest version of this deal, the Federated Data Platform, was awarded competitively in December 2023 to a Palantir-led consortium. Having had the deal previously will have been a big advantage for Palantir – a phenomenon known as “vendor lock-in”.
4. Can Palantir use my data for its own commercial purposes or share it with the US government?
Palantir’s role is as a “data processor”, which means it is not legally allowed to make its own decisions about what to do with the data – only the “data controllers” (NHS organisations) can.
So it is not legally allowed to use NHS data for their own purposes. And although UK regulators, such as the Information Commissioner’s Office, have oversight powers, some critics question how effectively large multinational technology providers can be audited in practice.
Trust plays an important role, particularly at a time when we have seen US government appropriating databases relating, for example, to health, mobile phone location and car number plates, for immigration enforcement. Under the US Cloud Act, American authorities can, under certain legal conditions, request data from US-based companies, which has raised concerns among privacy advocates about potential cross-border access.
5. What is the Federated Data Platform, and what is it supposed to do for the NHS?
There has long been an NHS England ambition to have a central place to store “all” NHS data. The core of this was effectively realised quickly during COVID, under special legislation, in two forms with slightly different targets.
The first was the NHS COVID-19 Data Store, which has grown into the Federated Data Platform, and is targeted more towards planning. The second is OpenSafely, which provides research access to unified NHS datasets using strong privacy protections.
6. Has the system improved NHS care, and is the taxpayer getting value for money?
The UK government has already made claims of significant improvements due to Palantir. But researchers have raised doubts both about the research methods used to quantify such successes and about the personal connections of the people involved in these.
7. What is Palantir’s track record — who else does it work for, and should that concern me?
It works with several other UK government organisations, including the army. The Israeli army reportedly used Palantir for AI-based targeting in the war in Gaza, which is a main reason Amnesty International campaigned against Palantir within the NHS.
8. Can I opt my data out? If so, how?
You can opt out of your GP practice sharing your health data, or separately out of NHS England and others sharing it for research and planning.
Unfortunately, this would affect beneficial uses of your health data too, including by making the overall dataset less comprehensive and representative. This is part of why the medical community worries about the Palantir effect.
9. Why are so many doctors, nurses and campaigners opposed to this — and should I be worried too?
There is a wide range of concerns. Palantir’s political positioning, including opposing the NHS in its current form, as well as the more controversial political views expressed by some of its leaders, means many people don’t trust it with their health data.
There is a technological concern over concentrating NHS data processing with a single supplier, possibly replacing working solutions with inferior ones. For some people, Palantir’s activity with ICE and allegedly in Gaza makes them morally unacceptable.
10. Could the government cancel the contract, and what would happen to the data Palantir already holds if it did?
There is a break clause in the current contract coming up, so yes, it can. The contract says Palantir needs to lose all access to the data when the contract ends.
Responding to Conservative MP Wendy Morton’s call for more scrutiny of Palantir’s ability to protect data, Louis Mosley, Palantir UK’s executive vice-chair, told the BBC that he welcomed scrutiny and was confident the firm was delivering value for money for NHS patients.
Mosley went on to say that Palantir has no interest in patient data in the UK. “It’s not our business model,” he said. “It’s not the legal basis on which we operate, in the same way that Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Word or email is used in the NHS and again that is NHS data, Microsoft doesn’t have access to it, nor do we to NHS data.”
Alarm caused by posts of Alex Karp, tech firm’s CEO, championing US military dominance and of AI weapons
The US spy tech company Palantir published a manifesto extolling the benefits of American power and implying some cultures are inferior to others – in what MPs have called “a parody of a RoboCop film” and “the ramblings of a supervillain”.
“Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive,” wrote Palantir in a 22-point post on X over the weekend, which also called for an end to the “postwar neutering” of Germany and Japan.
The post exhorted the US to reinstate a military draft, saying that “free and democratic societies” need “hard power” in order to prevail.
It also predicted a future dominated by autonomous weapons: “The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.”
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It led to criticism from several MPs, who said that it raised yet more questions about the UK’s portfolio of contracts with the company. Palantir has built up more than £500m in contracts in Britain, including a £330m contract with the NHS, as well as deals with the police and Ministry of Defence. These deals have come in for increasing criticism.
“Palantir’s manifesto, which embraces AI state surveillance of citizens along with national service in the USA, is either a parody of a RoboCop film, or a disturbing narcissistic rant from an arrogant organisation,” said Martin Wrigley, a Liberal Democrat MP who is a member of the commons science and technology select committee.
“Either way it shows that the company’s ethos is entirely unsuited to working on UK government projects involving citizens’ most sensitive private data.”
NHS staff blockade the entrance to NHS England’s headquarters in central London demanding the cancellation of its contract with Palantir, which campaign groups say supplies advanced technology to Israel’s military, April 3, 2024
