Palantir poised to cash in on Wes Streeting’s NHS plan

Good Law Project understands that Palantir is heading the pack to run the new single patient record at the centre of Wes Streeting’s 10-year health plan.

We’ve been raising concerns about this US spy-tech giant since 2023, when it became clear it would bag a multimillion-pound contract to run the framework for health records held by NHS England.

Palantir has worked with US agencies accused of separating children from their parents, wrongfully detaining thousands of US citizens and forcibly sterilising women. The day after Israel was accused of genocide at the International Criminal Court, the company signed a deal with Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to provide “support for war-related missions”. And the firm’s predictive policing project in LA was cancelled in 2019 after accusations that it entrenched racism and didn’t reduce crime.

Despite this alarming record, the Tories handed Palantir this massive contract in November 2023. And when we carried on raising concerns, the firm hired a Tory-linked PR agency to try and run a secret campaign to discredit us.

Even after the election, the government’s enthusiasm for this shady company and its rightwing founder – who said in 2023 that “the NHS makes people sick” – has remained undimmed. When thousands of you joined us last year to tell Streeting to keep Palantir out of our NHS, he didn’t even respond.

Instead, Streeting is axing patient watchdogs and professional groups that oversee contracts in NHS England and replacing them with AI dashboards – a move which could hand yet more influence over health systems to firms like Palantir.

And the company just gets shadier and shadier. Earlier this year it emerged that Donald Trump had chosen the firm to build a central database of US citizens. And last month Liberty revealed that Palantir is building a “real-time” network to share data for police forces in the east of England.

NHS records could transform healthcare and improve the lives of people across the UK. But only if we can trust the systems that are put in place. And there is a better way. We don’t have to hand our private health records to a company that is fuelling the worst excesses of Trump’s regime.

With Keir Starmer on the ropes and Nigel Farage riding high in the polls, Streeting’s drive to increase ministerial control over the NHS looks all the more dangerous. It’s time for the health secretary to listen to patients with their most personal information on the line, and build a system for our data that we can all have confidence in.

According to the health department, “no decisions have been made” about specific companies for the single patient record project.

“It is ludicrous that patients cannot see their own records and are treated by staff who do not have the full picture of their health,” the department said, “and we are determined to pull the NHS out of the dark ages.

“We are committed to maintaining the highest standards of data privacy and security, and any decisions will be made with these principles in mind.”

We also approached Palantir for comment.