HEALTH workers and campaigners protested outside Downing Street yesterday as they handed in a petition, signed by more than 200,000 people, demanding that the NHS break its contract with the US spy tech firm Palantir.
Campaigners say the break clause in Palantir’s £330 million federated data platform contract can be triggered at any point between now and February.
Ministers are reported to be preparing to extend the deal for at least two years instead, having concluded that triggering the clause would be ‘too disruptive’.
Martin Wrigley, Liberal Democrat MP for Newton Abbot and one of two MPs leading the campaign, told the crowd: ‘Palantir is now trying to take GP data as well and this is very worrying, it puts patients off of speaking to their GP. Palantir is taking as much data as possible, NHS data is a sovereign issue.
‘We should not be sharing it with multinationals which are doing awful things around the world.
‘Only 30 hospitals have used their Palantir theatre hospitalisation system,’ he said.
‘The NHS England team are out of their depth. Palantir is running rings around them.’
Palantir, founded by the Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel, provides information for Israeli military operations in Gaza.
Sonia Nunez, a volunteer paramedic who has worked in Syria, said: ‘When I was in Syria I saw what they did.’
She added: ‘It’s a surveillance system and it’s like a weapon. They know exactly where people are. I saw a lot of white phosphorus being used, people dying in agony.
‘Someone was doing the targeting. Silence is complicity.’
Agith, a resident doctor in London, said: ‘I think Palantir is an expression of the worst manifestation of capitalism. Something as pure as healthcare, looking after someone else’s health and for serving human life, is prostituted to companies solely pursuing profit.
‘Not only that, we know that they profit off of killing people in the Middle East.’
NHS England recently deleted a claim that 137 hospital trusts were benefiting from the platform, after 29 said they were not using all or most of it.
Unison general secretary Andrea Egan has called Palantir a ‘sinister American surveillance firm’ and said any extension would be ‘completely unacceptable and a betrayal of staff and patients’.
