No Palantir Federated Data Platform in South London
SEL and SWL ICB Digital Committees, Chief Executives and Chairs; Executive and Non-Executive Leadership of South London Hospital Trusts
The NHS has given a £330m contract to Palantir - a US military surveillance company - to run the new Federated Data Platform (FDP).
The FDP links patient data across the whole NHS. Handing this to a company built on intelligence, tracking and profiling means our health data is at serious risk. Palantir is also complicit in human rights abuses, powering Israel’s genocide, ICE mass deportations, and racist predictive policing.
Multiple NHS trusts have already rejected Palantir software. We, the people of South London, also reject this partnership and call on the South East and South West London Integrated Care Boards (in charge of commissioning, planning and managing health services in South London) and their multiple hospital trusts to immediately stop the FDP roll out.
Sponsored by
To:
SEL and SWL ICB Digital Committees, Chief Executives and Chairs; Executive and Non-Executive Leadership of South London Hospital Trusts
From:
[Your Name]
We are writing as health workers, patients and residents of South London to demand an immediate halt to the rollout of the Federated Data Platform (FDP) and its supplier, Palantir. This partnership poses a serious threat to NHS values, public trust, data ethics and the duty of our ICB and local trusts to protect the people they serve.
Across South London, parts of the FDP are already being piloted or prepared for rollout. Its local adoption is non-mandatory. As your community, we urge you to reject it now, as other Trusts around the UK have already done, for the following reasons:
(1) A Controversial Contract Awarded Outside Normal Rules
Palantir gained its current position through unusual procurement routes, ministerial intervention and contracts awarded without tender as well as bypassing normal patient confidentiality rules, leading to serious concerns of an unfair procurement process.
(2) The FDP threatens data privacy and trust in the NHS, especially given Palantir’s role in UK and US surveillance and security agencies
Leading experts, including the BMA and the National Data Guardian, have raised alarms about lack of transparency, unclear safeguards and potential misuse of NHS patient data. These concerns are compounded by Palantir's role in mass surveillance programs. The interoperability between its 'civil' platform, which includes the FDP, and its intelligence/surveillance platform used by UK police and other intelligence agencies, has been raised as a serious risk and concern by Parliament's Science, Innovation and Technology Committee.
(3) Palantir is an unethical partner
Palantir's intelligence and military technologies have been used to power ICE mass deportations in America, racist predictive policing, and Israel's genocidal military campaign in Gaza. Partnering with Palantir risks complicity in grave human-rights abuses.
(4) NHS data should not be privatised
Instead of outsourcing valuable financial and personnel resources, and locking in dependency on private companies, we believe the NHS, and the trust, should focus on developing strong in-house data management capabilities
Our Requests:
(1) Do not implement the FDP locally, and pause any rollout already underway
(2) Raise these concerns nationally and oppose the enforced rollout on all trusts
(3) Allow patients to opt out of their data being included