- UK government could end Palantir NHS contract early
- MPs widely opposed to company’s contract over data protection and ethical concerns
- Break clause could see contract ended by early 2027
The UK government is considering activating a break clause in Palantir’s £330 million contract with the NHS.
The controversial US analytics and surveillance tech company was awarded the contract to provide the NHS with the Federated Data Platform (FDP) – a centralized hub of NHS staff and patient data.
However the FDP has seen widespread opposition due to concerns surrounding Palantir’s reputation, ethical concerns, and worries around supplying the company with highly sensitive information on millions of Brits.
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Widespread opposition
“The current contract delivers a subscription service that leaves no deliverables after the subscription – no software, no improvements and no intellectual property after spending more than £330 million,” said Liberal Democrat MP Martin Wrigley ahead of a Westminster debate. He also stated that he had evidence to suggest that staff find the FDP awful to use, and that it only benefits a quarter of its user organizations.
“All the specially written software and intellectual property rights belong to the supplier, says the contract. All the rights to any know-how are explicitly retained by the supplier and not passed across on termination of the contract. The contract delivers no software – not one line – just a subscribed service; a permanent lock-in; a single point of failure,” Wrigley continued. “Palantir is not only the wrong technical solution; NHS users report that it is awful to use.”
Zubir Ahmed MP, junior minister for the Department of Health and Social Care, has said the break clause, which could end the seven year contract in early 2027, is being weighed up as a possible option.
“My north star is always patient safety and quality, and of course value for money. If, at the point of the break clause, we evaluate and find that there are other providers that can do the job better, then of course that needs to be looked at and reflected upon,” he said.
Why the controversy?
Palantir has been criticized for its involvement in supplying the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency with its ImmigrationOS software, which helps identify suspected illegal immigrants and track them in near real time – sometimes with the help of medical data.
Palantir staff have also allegedly been given NHS.net email accounts, granting them access to a database containing the personal information of over 1.5 million NHS staff.
Palantir’s UK Executive Vice-Chair Louis Mosley previously said, “We have no interest in patient data in the UK,” in response to criticism from UK MPs about the company’s reputation.
Palantir has also won a pilot contract with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to analyze highly sensitive financial regulation data with the goal of rooting out fraud and financial crimes, sparking more concerns about the company’s access to sensitive information.
Via The Register
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benedict.collins@futurenet.com (Benedict Collins)
