“It’s exactly the use case that you don’t outsource, and you certainly don’t outsource outside the country,” Laura Gilbert, senior director of AI at the Tony Blair Institute, a think tank founded by the former prime minister, tells WIRED. “We should be learning from that data and building a better health service, not allowing an offshore company to learn and build better products they can sell to someone else.”
Ayub Bhayat, the director of data and analytics at the NHS, tells WIRED that the federated data platform is helping patients “while saving money for NHS teams and taxpayers.”
“There is no requirement for its use,” he says.
In early June, members of Parliament published a report warning that the UK’s growing dependence on Palantir represents “an unacceptable point of weakness.” The company is on track to become highly entangled in the public sector, the parliamentary committee argued, giving it immense leverage over the British state. The report also described a “clear mismatch with UK values.”
After the report was published, the UK technology secretary, Liz Kendall, said that the government is conducting a review of “every single aspect” of the NHS contract with Palantir before deciding whether to carry the deal forward.
Responding to the report in an op-ed published by The Telegraph, Mosley accused the MPs of “putting politics above patients” and fearmongering over the possibility that the company might abuse its access to sensitive health data. “Each NHS trust controls its own data; Palantir cannot use it, sell it, or move it,” he wrote.
Whether or not the government decides to carry the NHS contract forward, Palantir has demonstrated a willingness to resist attempts to oust it from the UK public sector. According to The Times, the company is gearing up to sue the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who blocked a $65 million deal with the Metropolitan Police, citing concerns about the procurement process and “values.”
A couple of hours after the demonstrations began, the protesters withdrew to a café at the nearby public library.
The group shared an optimism over a perceived swell in momentum behind calls to eject Palantir from the NHS, particularly in the wake of the parliamentary report. “We have this really big opportunity right now, because of the break clause,” says Lurken, the Pull the Plug cofounder.
But there’s also a world in which renewed public attention to the Palantir question could backfire, some feel, if the government decides to forge ahead with the contract. Another protester, who gave his name as JJ and identified himself as an NHS practitioner, says he worries that Palantir’s notoriety could cause already-skittish patients to think twice before volunteering information to their health care provider, with implications for their care. “We know that people don’t want to tell us everything. People are already distrustful. They’re just going to clam up,” says JJ. “We’re going to get less information, less history to be able to help people.”
Additional reporting by Isabella Ward.
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