By Martin Franklin

In 2023, the Tory government awarded a £330 million contract for an NHS data platform to Palantir, a US-based surveillance and military technology firm. The award was made without full, open competition, raising questions about transparency and accountability in the procurement process and echoing how some contracts were awarded during the Covid crisis.  In a similar manner, Palantir was recently given a £240 million contract with the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

Palantir specialises in data analytics systems, surveillance and AI military technologies. Its clients include the US military and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the UK Ministry of Defence, and the Israeli Government, supporting the latter’s operations in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Given Palantir’s background, should it be handling sensitive NHS health data? The NHS holds one of the world’s most valuable datasets, containing confidential health information on 65 million UK residents. This data has the potential to improve healthcare and reduce costs, enabling the NHS to allocate resources to scientific research and the development of better treatments. But these benefits can be realised only if the data is managed competently and in a way that serves the public interest.

Some NHS trusts have criticised the effectiveness of Palantir’s Federated Data Platform (FDP). Experts argue that FDP is inferior to similar platforms already used by some trusts. Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust stated that adopting FDP would reduce functionality. Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has declined to join the programme. However, the Department of Health and Social Care are determined to push the Palantir platform onto trusts and have awarded KPMG an £8 million contract to promote it.  And NHS trusts are expected to adopt FDP as a mandatory, phased rollout, by the end of the 2027/28.

The company’s ethos is unsympathetic to publicly owned and managed healthcare. Its billionaire co-founder and Trump donor, Peter Thiel, described Britons’ affection for the NHS as “Stockholm syndrome” and urged the government to “rip the whole thing from the ground and start over.” He also claimed that the NHS “makes people sick.”

Who will have access to NHS data shared through the FDP?  Reassurances from the Government about the use of patient data have been weak and unclear. The Government has stated it wishes to “make [NHS] datasets more open to business, researchers, and citizens.”  NHS documents obtained by openDemocracy admitted that Palantir will “collect and process confidential patient information.”

Medical and data ethics experts express concern about the protection of patient data including the BMA, who complain that consultation and reassurances have been inadequate and that the scope and scale of the programme remains vague.  

Patients cannot opt-out  from their data being used in the FDP.  Companies like Meta and Google frequently bend data regulations and have repeatedly violated data privacy and data protection rules incurring fines. Palantir will have a powerful incentive to behave in the same way, harvesting our health data for commercial or other more sinister purposes. The company’s insistence that “only the UK government” will control what happens to the FDP’s unprecedented collection of data, is not reassuring.

Palantir provides surveillance systems that enable states to monitor and target their citizens. The company is increasingly embedded in our state. It has contracts with the UK Ministry of Defence, Home Office, DHSC, the Cabinet Office, the Police and other state bodies. Campaigners are alarmed that FDP  extends the capacity and culture of state surveillance further into the NHS.

The Home Office has attempted many times to get access to migrant health data and track their location. Existing mechanisms such as Prevent, migrant charging and data sharing with the Home Office have made doctors into border guards and turned the NHS into a place of policing and surveillance for some patients. 

Our government has no qualms about employing Palantir – a company without ethical values, no commitment to public health, privacy or public wellbeing – to manage the data of UK citizens on such a scale.  It also sees no problem with increasing the concentration of government data in the servers of a foreign defence company. 

Do our leading politicians find the potential for mass surveillance attractive at a time of plummeting public faith in our political institutions, rising discontent and public protest?

Palantir’s expansion is connected to the privatisation of public services. The government’s insistence on pushing FDP on to the NHS is part of that process despite alternatives that are proving effective.  Privatisation and government contracts are a major source of profit and potential expansion and so we see concerted lobbying by the likes of Palantir, Microsoft, Amazon and Google who seek both contracts and the shaping of public policy.  There is no market operating here, only competition between tech giants.

NHS trusts are currently not yet legally required to adopt FDP. There is still around a year for scrutiny and refusal but it will require public pressure.  The leading national campaigns against Palantir are The Good Law Project and Medact; local campaigns include Keep Our NHS Public.

Martin Franklin is active with the Defend the Whittington Hospital Coalition.

Image: Forbes “what is a data scientist” series word cloud | Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/notbrucelee/6964774217 Licence: Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed