Parliamentary committees call for break clause in £330m Palantir deal
Beyond the formal legal objections, hundreds of thousands of additional people have signed petitions demanding that the government cancel its £330 million contract with Palantir outright, according to the Guardian. Andy Burnham will be required within months to make a decision on whether to back or terminate the Palantir deal, the newspaper reported.
Two House of Commons select committees have separately called for Labour to exercise a break clause in the seven-year deal, which comes into force in February 2027. Campaigners have voiced anger at Palantir’s work for the Israeli military and at Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
David Murray, a retired IBM systems engineer and one of those requesting the data block, framed his decision in terms of trust. “I am a believer in the NHS having really good data on their patients, but I want it to be something you can really trust to be used for the right purposes,” Murray told the Guardian. “I am not happy about Palantir’s involvement with the IDF in Gaza and ICE in America.”
On Wednesday, the human rights group Amnesty International and the patient campaign group Just Treatment parked a van styled like a shot-up Palestinian ambulance outside Palantir’s London headquarters in a stunt that asked: “Why should a company linked to Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system have any place in ours?”
Protesters have also raised concerns, acknowledged by the NHS England chief executive, Jim Mackey, that the benefits to public health from the Palantir-powered platform may not be as significant as has been claimed, according to the Guardian.
Palantir has defended the contract. The company says the FDP, which is designed to connect sprawling health service data on topics ranging from surgery schedules to discharge planning, is helping to cut waiting lists and frees up beds. Louis Mosley, the company’s executive vice-president for UK and Europe, has accused people who disagree with that assessment of suffering from “Palantir derangement syndrome.” A company spokesperson said: “Palantir software is helping to deliver better care, with trusts using it recording 117,000 additional operations, a 14.3% reduction in discharge delays for long-stay patients and a 5.6% improvement in the number of people finding out whether or not they have cancer within 28 days.”
On the Gaza question, Mosley has said the company’s technology was used for locating hostages, not military targeting. When challenged last year by a protester alleging “Palantir kills Palestinians” in Gaza, the company’s chief executive, Alex Karp, replied: “Mostly terrorists, that’s true.”
The formal objections to the FDP using personal data cite Article 21 of the UK General Data Protection Regulation and express concern that “the involvement of Palantir undermines my personal trust in NHS data confidentiality.” Palantir has said its patient data could only be handled according to the NHS’s instructions and remained in the UK.
Veronica Hawking, the campaigns director at 38 Degrees, which coordinated the data objections, called the volume of objections a political signal. “The scale of this public backlash should be a huge wake-up call for the government,” Hawking said.
A spokesperson for NHS England said: “All NHS organisations remain in control of their data within the FDP, with suppliers unable to access it for their own purposes, and we will respond to the objection requests in line with data protection law.” The 44,000 objectors have also asked that the NHS halt processing of their data through the Palantir platform while their main request is assessed.