Palantir’s Nhs England Contract ‘opens Door To Government Abuse Of Power’, Health Bosses Told

Palantir’s NHS statement opens nan doorway to nan Big Brother-style data-sharing that Reform UK would usage for a type of US migration raids, wellness bosses person been told.

Palantir Technologies – nan information analytics institution founded by Peter Thiel and Alex Karp – won a £330m NHS England statement to present nan Federated Data Platform successful 2023.

The UK authorities is urging wellness bodies to adopt FDP, which nan wellness secretary, Wes Streeting, says will guarantee nan NHS is “brought into nan integer age”.

But location are concerns astir Palantir, whose AI devices are utilized successful world conflicts, becoming embedded successful nan UK nationalist sector.

A briefing by nan wellness justness kindness Medact said nan “highly interoperable nature” of Palantir’s package could alteration “data-driven authorities abuses of power”, including US-style ICE raids.

The report, released connected Thursday and backed by doctors, lawyers, patients and quality authorities groups from nan No Palantir successful nan NHS run and sent to infirmary trusts and integrated attraction boards nationwide, was shared pinch nan Guardian and BMJ.

In nan US, ICE (US migration customs and enforcement), uses Palantir package for cross-governmental information analysis, including wellness data, to way group down. In nan UK, Reform UK, which announced plans for a UK type of ICE successful February, has said it would usage data-sharing.

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has announced plans for a UK type of ICE. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

A 2025 argumentation archive for Reform’s “Operation Restoring Justice” promised an “uncompromising ineligible reset”, adding: “A Reform authorities will … relentlessly place and detain each forbidden migrants successful nan UK. Using powers granted by nan caller legislation, it will automatically stock information betwixt nan Home Office, NHS, HMRC, DVLA, banks and nan police.”

Palantir’s package is utilized by UK constabulary forces and nan Ministry of Defence. A institution root said Palantir engages pinch and consults nan UK authorities connected argumentation matters, and vice versa.

The Medact briefing urges trusts and ICBs to “urgently decline” FDP, and for NHS England to terminate nan contract, saying partnering pinch Palantir risks weakening patients’ spot while “driving retired locally tailored and trusted information solutions”.

Greater Manchester ICB, which has wellness decision-making responsibilities for 2.8 cardinal people, has deferred adopting FDP, concluding take “might not coming worth for money and person nationalist spot risk” and that “local capacity importantly exceeded” what FDP offered.

More than 50,000 patients person written to local spot boards urging them not to adopt FDP, Dr Rhiannon Osborne from Medact said.

Osborne added: Palantir’s contracts pinch nationalist bodies, including nan NHS, are portion of nan description of invasive information and surveillance practices successful nan UK.”

The study said: “This study is concerned FDP, by bringing together disparate wellness datasets connected to a azygous level tally by Palantir, could alteration UK authorities departments, specified arsenic nan Home Office and constabulary departments, to much easy entree diligent data.

“Palantir’s services to different governments, including their statement pinch ICE, person progressive important cross-departmental information compiling and study … There is simply a consequence that a existent aliases early authorities could utilise a Palantir-run FDP for data-driven authorities abuses of powerfulness successful ways which they could not pinch existent NHS information systems.”

The Department of Health and Social Care was approached for comment.