Is this the first ever SLAPP by our own Government?

Earlier this month, Good Law Project posted a video on social media campaigning against the NHS’s £330m contract with US spy-tech company, Palantir. The video showed the GLP team taking fake NHS flyers into a local hospital. The flyers warned of an “infection” in the NHS. That infection was, and is Palantir.

The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) has now written to us demanding the NHS logo be removed from the video. DHSC says it owns trade marks and copyright in the NHS logo and claims that the logo “may not be used or adapted without the Department of Health and Social Care’s authorisation” and told Good Law Project to “stop using the NHS logo immediately”.

Not only is this an appalling attack on public freedom to criticise NHS England’s decisions. It’s also just wrong as a matter of law. Using the NHS logo to parody the NHS’s position on Palantir is entirely lawful.

The point of our stunt was to highlight the irony of the NHS, an organisation which is supposed to improve public health, giving Palantir sweeping access to our health records. Palantir’s catalogue of actions harmful to public health includes assisting Israel’s genocide in Gaza and ICE’s immigration raids in the US, where health records are used to locate targets for deportation. 

Plainly the DHSC should not be misrepresenting the law to try and suppress proper criticism of the deal the NHS did with Palantir. This is conduct that bears all the hallmarks of a SLAPP – but we will not be bullied and will not be taking down our video.

We have responded to the DHSC. We stand by our decision to publish the video and we have invited the DHSC to withdraw its letter. 

We refuse to be silenced. Join us in the fight to kick Palantir out of the NHS.