The UK will reportedly extend US data company Palantir’s contract with the NHS despite calls to end the relationship due to the firm’s ties to the IDF.
Palantir, which provides data management software to the health service, has had a £330 million contract since 2023, and a two-year extension is due to be reviewed next March.
The extension, though, has become the target of political pressure from pro-Palestine activists who object to the involvement of the firm, which also provides AI services and data analysis to the IDF, in the British public sector.
Earlier in the year, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: “Palantir is obviously a very big and very powerful company. [It is] at the cutting edge of high tech - the use of high tech in military and civilian purposes, the use of data in pharmaceutical research and the use of data, people's personal data in military activities as well.
“Palantir is deeply involved in the IDF and what it is doing in Gaza, where they have an incredible level of knowledge of every person... and that has been used to guide the bombardment and the killing of people in Gaza.”
However, according to the Financial Times (FT), “sources close to the matter” said cutting the contract would be too disruptive for the NHS.
They also reportedly indicated that the long-term plan is to replace Palantir with a British supplier, but that one cannot realistically be secured by March.
Since the recent reporting by the FT, Tom Guha, crisis campaigner for Amnesty International UK, has told Digital Health news outlet: “Ministers must show Palantir the door now, not give it two more years to bed in further.
“The NHS was built on a promise to do no harm. The reported plan to extend Palantir’s involvement would make a mockery of that principle and deepen public distrust in how NHS data is used.”
He added: “NHS trusts and integrated care boards must refuse to roll out Palantir’s platform. Patients against Palantir – the fight will go on.”
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