Government backs down over NHS deal with Palantir

Victory for openDemocracy as the government promises public consultation before expanding Palantir's contract

Civil liberties group openDemocracy announced on Tuesday that the UK government has been forced to make a U-turn in the face of a legal challenge over involvement of 'spy tech' firm Palantir in the NHS Covid-19 data store.

In a blog post, openDemocracy said that "the government has finally caved" following its lawsuit over the issue, and has now committed to not extending Palantir's contract beyond Covid without consulting the public.

"They've pressed pause," the organisation said, adding that "there will be no more mission creep" without assessing the views of the public.

The government has also agreed to engage the public, via patient juries, before deciding whether firms like Palantir should be offered long-term contracts in the NHS at all.

The victory for openDemocracy comes after it launched a legal case against the NHS over Palantir's involvement in the analysis of public health data. The lawsuit claimed that NHS England had failed to conduct an impact assessment when it offered a new two-year £23.5m data contract to the US firm in December.

Earlier in March 2020, NHS authorities awarded a short-term contract to Palantir to develop a data platform to help deploy resources in response to Covid-19. The initial contract involved Palantir's Foundry software being used to power the NHS's 'datastore' of health information related to the pandemic. The NHS said at the time that all the data collected "will only be used for Covid-19" and that "only relevant information will be collected."

In June, the government released details of multiple data deals it had signed with Palantir, Microsoft, Google and UK-based AI firm Faculty, which has links to Dominic Cummings.

openDemocracy claimed at the time that Faculty and Palantir were granted certain intellectual property (IP) rights as part of the government contracts and that the firms were allowed to make profit from their access to the NHS data.

In December, NHS England signed a new two-year contract with Palantir to provide the NHS with "data management platform services".

openDemocracy was critical of the new contract, arguing that this contract "reaches far beyond Covid: to Brexit, general business planning and much more" and could demolish trust in the NHS.

According to openDemocracy, the government lawyers argued in the court that "citizens have no right to a say in major NHS contracts" with big tech firms.

"But we believed the public does have those rights. So we sued."

This entire fight has been "about trust," the civil liberties organisation says, claiming that the NHS, with its massive troves of health data, is highly attractive to big tech firms. The asset is worth £10bn a year, the organisation believes, and Palantir and other tech companies stand to profit from accessing or managing the asset.

Palantir was founded in 2003 with the support from the CIA, and helps organisations in analysing big volumes of data from governments and other sources to get valuable patterns and insights.

The US company has been known for supporting the CIA's intelligence operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. In recent years, it has faced criticism from civil rights groups in the US for providing its software to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to track down illegal immigrants.

openDemocracy said that its mission is not yet complete, and that it still seeks full transparency on the Palantir deal. Cori Crider, co-founder of Foxglove, the law firm that brought the case with openDemocracy, tweeted that Palantir "will be back".

openDemocracy has requested that the government disclose what data is being fed into Palantir's datastore and is seeking assurances that the public consultation will be far-reaching, not just a "box-ticking exercise".