MPs have demanded that Health Secretary Wes Streeting “listen to experts” who warned against implementing his “disastrous” plans to further privatise the NHS.
At a debate chaired by Labour MP Richard Burgon in Westminster on Tuesday, MPs heard new expert evidence exposing that levels of privatisation within the health service were far higher than previously thought.
Mr Burgon said: “We need to push back against this Mandelsonian wing of the Labour party. I want Wes to hear what is being shared in this room.
“Privatisation is disastrous for patients and for workers. It’s not the way forward.”
The meeting with the NHS working group coincided with the publication of a report co-authored by campaigners Keep Our NHS Public and the 99% Organisation.
It found the level of private involvement in the NHS to be about 30 per cent, rather than the more widely known figure of 7 per cent.
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MPs including Rachel Maskell, Andy McDonald, Neil Duncan-Jordan heard testimonies on the “disastrous” state of privatisation in the NHS from health experts, NHS staff and economists.
Report co-author Mark E Thomas said: “The figure which is most referred to in this debate was 7 per cent of privatisation. But really we need to be thinking 30 per cent.”
He added: “In some specialties, more than 50 per cent of treatments are already paid for privately, such as ophthalmology for example. It’s the same for dentistry.”
Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.Nigel Farage attacks the NHSImage of George Osborne asking where is the money to be made in the NHS
Recent rises in older motherhood and obese women having babies have contributed to maternity care becoming more complicated. Photograph: Jeff Gilbert/Alamy
Damning inquiry into services in England reveals falsification of medical records after ‘negligent’ care
Hospitals that cause harm and injury to women and babies during childbirth often resort to a “cover-up” of their mistakes, falsify medical records and deny bereaved parents answers, a damning report has found.
“Negligent” care has devastating emotional and psychological consequences for families, disputes between maternity staff have a “disastrous” impact on mothers, and ethnic minority and poorer women have worse outcomes because of racism and discrimination, Lady Amos said.
Recent rises in older motherhood and obese women having babies have also contributed to maternity care becoming more complicated, the ex-Labour cabinet minister added in a report the government commissioned amid mounting alarm about NHS childbirth services in England.
“The system is not working for women, babies and families, or for staff,” Amos concluded after spending months talking to hundreds of families and maternity staff.
“We have seen maternity and neonatal services trying to respond in difficult circumstances and dealing with competing pressures but too often failing to deliver the safe care that women, families and babies expect and deserve, at times with devastating consequences.”
NHS trusts continue to provide poor care because they are doing too little to improve its quality and safety as a result of not learning lessons from previous maternity scandals, she added.
Lady Amos, who chaired the investigation. Her final report is due in the next few months.
“It is a source of continuing distress to families, and great frustration to staff, that the areas identified in previous reviews and investigations as requiring action do not seem to have been addressed or have only been partially addressed. This cycle must stop,” she said.
The Palantir Technologies logo. (Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto)
From Epstein to ICE to the IDF.
A US spytech firm deeply embedded in the most sensitive areas of the British state is being scrutinised as part of the fallout from the latest tranche of documents related to the financier and child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Palantir Technologies, co-founded and chaired by billionaire Peter Thiel, holds over £670m in UK government contracts across NHS patient data, defence operations, police intelligence databases and nuclear weapons management. The multibillion-dollar US company has also provided military tech to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the genocide in Gaza, and helped facilitate Donald Trump’s brutal immigration enforcement crackdown across the US.
The most recent dump of Epstein files sheds light on the links between Palantir, Thiel, Epstein and the former British ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson.
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What is Palantir?
Palantir Technologies, worth approximately $300bn, is a software company that pulls together and analyses data from different sources.
Headquartered in Miami, Florida after a recent exit from Denver, Colorado, Palantir describes its software as powering “real-time, AI-driven decisions in critical government and commercial enterprises in the west, from the factory floors to the front lines”. Its products are extensively deployed in military, policing and healthcare contexts.
The name Palantir is inspired by the crystal balls from JRR Tolkien’s epic fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings. By looking into a palantír, the evil Lord Sauron is able to see in any direction, at any distance.
Built with CIA funding to support the US ‘war on terror’ following the 11 September attacks, Palantir was founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Stephen Cohen, Jon Lonsdale and Nathan Gettings, but didn’t go public until 2020.
Much of its work has been shrouded in secrecy, but today its flagship products – Palantir Gotham and Palantir Foundry – connect fragmented stores of information, forming them into big, searchable databases that can then be used for analysis, intelligence-gathering, policing and business analytics.
Gotham is Palantir’s defence and intelligence platform, marketed as an “operating system for global decision making” and primarily used by militaries and counterterrorism analysts. It’s built to handle vast datasets and employed by the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency and Department of Defense in the US, and across Europe, including by the Ukrainian military.
In Ukraine, Palantir’s Gotham system is credited with shaping the future of warfare by pulling together images, drone footage and battlefield data to create an operational map to form an “AI-powered kill chain”.
Gotham supports alerts, geospatial analysis and prediction, with the latter drawing criticism from rights groups over the impact of predictive policing and intrusive mass surveillance. A 2019 predicting policing project between Palantir and the Los Angeles Police Department was cancelled after accusations that it reinforced racism and didn’t reduce crime.
Palantir has also built custom tools for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The agency has reportedly spent more than $200m on Palantir contracts to help it identify targets for deportation by integrating travel histories, visa records, biometrics and social media data. In the past month, immigration enforcement agents in the US have kidnapped children and shot dead citizen observers as part of Trump’s brutal immigration crackdown.
A protestor at a demonstration targeting tech billionaires on 13 June 2025 in Los Angeles. Credit: Madison Swart/Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
NHS staff blockade the entrance to NHS England’s headquarters in central London demanding the cancellation of its contract with Palantir, which supplies advanced technology to Israel’s military, April 3, 2024
LABOUR should have ended the £300 million NHS contract with Palantir, campaigners said today after it emerged officials warned the US tech firm’s reputation would hinder its rollout.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting was privately briefed last June that “public perception” of Palantir — which works for the Israeli military and US Ice operations — was affecting delivery of the AI data platform and would “make it harder to go further,” documents released to campaign group Foxglove revealed.
Fewer than half of health authorities had started using the technology by last summer amid opposition from the public and doctors.
The fallout over Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein also affected Palantir’s image, as it employed the former ambassador’s lobbying company, Global Counsel.
Keep Our NHS Public co-chairman Dr Tony O’Sullivan said: “This initial NHS contract with Palantir was made by Matt Hancock and the Tories in 2020, but Labour should have ended it.
“Well over £1 billion of public money is now in Palantir’s hands… despite being steeped in the blood of migrants hounded by Ice in the US and the people of Gaza and the West Bank.”
He urged Palantir to be “out of the NHS” and patients’ data when the contract is re-examined in 2027.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting speaking to the media during a visit to the specialist surgical unit at Trafford General Hospital in Manchester, February 12, 2026
CAMPAIGNERS have written to Wes Streeting requesting the release of his messages with five private healthcare-linked donors, following the Health Secretary’s publication of WhatsApp chats with disgraced former peer Peter Mandelson.
The letter, signed by leaders of eight organisations campaigning against NHS privatisation — including We Own It, the Socialist Health Association and Doctors Association UK — said the public has a right to know how health policy is decided.
They said: “Releasing to the public your messages with these donors (relating to health policy, DHSC [Department of Health and Social Care] announcements and NHS contracts) would help assure the public that your policy of increasing the use of the private sector for the provision of NHS services, is not driven by a quid pro quo relationship.”
Research by the Good Law Project in April 2025 showed 60 per cent of donations received by Mr Streeting since 2015 have come from private healthcare companies or those with financial interests in the sector.
Mr Mandelson, whose lobbying firm Global Counsel, represents data surveillance firm Palantir, has previously helped to facilitate a meeting between the firm and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
A general view of staff on a NHS hospital ward
