"Palantir’s NHS England contract ‘opens door to government abuse of power’, health bosses told"

Health justice charity Medact says data-sharing potential could be used for UK version of US immigration raids

Palantir’s NHS contract opens the door to the Big Brother-style data-sharing that Reform UK would use for a version of US immigration raids, health bosses have been told.

Palantir Technologies – the data analytics company founded by Peter Thiel and Alex Karp – won a £330m NHS England contract to deliver the Federated Data Platform in 2023.

The UK government is urging health bodies to adopt FDP, which the health secretary, Wes Streeting, says will ensure the NHS is “brought into the digital age”.

But there are concerns about Palantir, whose AI tools are used in global conflicts, becoming embedded in the UK public sector.

A briefing by the health justice charity Medact said the “highly interoperable nature” of Palantir’s software could enable “data-driven state abuses of power”, including US-style ICE raids.

The report, released on Thursday and backed by doctors, lawyers, patients and human rights groups from the No Palantir in the NHS campaign and sent to hospital trusts and integrated care boards nationwide, was shared with the Guardian and BMJ.

In the US, ICE (US immigration customs and enforcement), uses Palantir software for cross-governmental data analysis, including health data, to track people down. In the UK, Reform UK, which announced plans for a UK version of ICE in February, has said it would use data-sharing.

Palantir told the Guardian it had “no intention of and no means of using the data in the way that the Medact report is suggesting. To do so would be illegal and in breach of contract.”

However, concerns rest on Palantir software’s cross-departmental “drag and drop” capabilities if a future UK government changes the law, as Reform has pledged to facilitate “mass deportation”. [...]

The Medact briefing urges trusts and ICBs to “urgently decline” FDP, and for NHS England to terminate the contract, saying partnering with Palantir risks weakening patients’ trust while “driving out locally tailored and trusted data solutions”. [...]

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

Osborne added: Palantir’s contracts with public bodies, including the NHS, are part of the expansion of invasive data and surveillance practices in the UK.”

The report said: “This report is concerned FDP, by bringing together disparate health datasets on to a single platform run by Palantir, could enable UK government departments, such as the Home Office and police departments, to more easily access patient data.

“Palantir’s services to other governments, including their contract with ICE, have involved significant cross-departmental data compiling and analysis … There is a risk that a current or future government could utilise a Palantir-run FDP for data-driven state abuses of power in ways which they could not with current NHS data systems.”

A spokesperson for Palantir said: “Palantir software is playing an important role in improving patient care – helping to deliver 100,000 additional operations, a 12% reduction in discharge delays and the removal of 675,000 patients from waiting lists.

“How that software is used is entirely under the control of the NHS with data only able to be processed in accordance with their strict instructions.”

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