A recent government report called Palentir’s presence an “unacceptable point of weakness.”
The UK government is reviewing its National Health Service (NHS) partnership with US data firm Palantir to decide if it will end the contract early, Reuters reported. The decision follows the release of a parliamentary committee report that called Palantir’s increasing presence in the UK public sector an “unacceptable point of weakness.”
Technology minister Liz Kendall said the review would evaluate the NHS’s £330 million ($441 million) deal with Palentir and decide whether to terminate it using a “break clause” at the end of the initial term in 2027. “The current health secretary is reviewing every single aspect of that (contract) to make sure we get the right deal for Britain,” Kendall told Times Radio.
Palantir won the NHS contract in November 2023 to help build its NHS Federated Platform connecting “vital health information across the NHS,” according to an NHS contract explainer. The deal was agreed to after a “rigorous” procurement process with parties required to demonstrate “financial, commercial, security and technical capability.”
However, UK MPs are pushing for early termination over data security worries and Palantir’s US defense and immigration enforcement ties. It was also recently revealed that a top civil servant at a UK health advisory body advised one of Palantir’s partners when it was bidding for the contract, according to a recent report from The Financial Post.
Critics have also raised concerns about how sensitive patient data is handled, following a report last month that the NHS may grant Palantir personnel and others broad access to identifiable patient data on a part of its data platform. “Palantir software can only be used to process data precisely in line with the instruction of the customer. Using the data for anything else would not only be illegal but technically impossible due to granular access controls overseen by the NHS,” the company said in response.
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