{"id":547144,"date":"2026-04-23T21:51:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T21:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/547144\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T21:51:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T21:51:14","slug":"thousands-call-on-uk-ministers-to-cut-ties-with-us-tech-giant-palantir-palantir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/547144\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands call on UK ministers to cut ties with US tech giant Palantir | Palantir"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than 200,000 people have called on ministers to break contracts with Palantir<\/a> in an apparent groundswell of public concern about the US tech company\u2019s role in the NHS, police, military and councils.<\/p>\n

Two petitions have attracted 229,000 signatures, one calling for the government to end all public contracts with the company, the software of which is used by Donald Trump\u2019s ICE immigration enforcement programme and the Israeli military, and another urging the health secretary, Wes Streeting, to cancel its \u00a3330m patient data contract with the NHS.<\/p>\n

This week, the Guardian revealed<\/a> the Metropolitan police was in talks to use the company\u2019s AI to analyse sensitive intelligence, and Palantir published a manifesto described<\/a> by one MP as the \u201cramblings of a supervillain\u201d.<\/p>\n

But the tech company is pushing back against the multipronged campaign challenging its work in the UK by taking issue with claims made widely on social media by the Green party leader, Zack Polanski, and the legal campaigner Jolyon Maugham, who this week launched a podcast investigation into Palantir. The Liberal Democrats are also calling for the NHS contract to be cancelled and new contracts to be halted.<\/p>\n

Matthew McGregor, the chief executive at 38 Degrees, the campaigning organisation that promoted the petitions, said: \u201cAlmost a quarter of a million people have said loud and clear: they don\u2019t want a company like Palantir, whose technology is used by ICE and the Israeli army, to have access to their most sensitive data.\u201d<\/p>\n

Referring to the manifesto that was published by the company\u2019s US operation at the weekend, which said free and democratic societies need \u201chard power\u201d to prevail, he added: \u201cThe government need to act fast and trigger the break clause on these lucrative contracts now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Palantir has \u00a3600m worth of contracts with UK public bodies and may soon extend that, with talks continuing with Scotland Yard to use the company\u2019s AI technology to automate intelligence analysis for criminal investigations. If a deal is confirmed it would represent a significant expansion in Palantir\u2019s involvement in UK law enforcement. It also has a \u00a3240m contract with the Ministry of Defence and has this week renewed a contract with Coventry city council thought to be worth \u00a3750,000. It also has deals with Bedfordshire police and Leicestershire police, among other constabularies.<\/p>\n

Palantir\u2019s UK chief executive, Louis Mosley, has been seeking to rebut criticism of the company, sometimes using internet memes, in what has become a highly public PR fight.<\/p>\n

Maugham used social media to describe the Good Law Project\u2019s podcast as looking into \u201cwhat happens when you take an antichrist-obsessed billionaire and a company named after an evil seeing stone in The Lord of the Rings and you put them at the heart of the NHS\u201d.<\/p>\n

Moseley responded by posting a meme from the US sitcom It\u2019s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, suggesting critics were engaged in a conspiracy theory.<\/p>\n

He also posted on X: \u201cNote to diary: box @ZachPolanski<\/a> [Polanski\u2019s actual X account is @ZackPolanski<\/a>] Tuesday, wrestle Jolyon Maugham on Thursday. Leaving Friday open in case @EdwardJDavey<\/a> fancies a fencing match.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polanski\u2019s campaign against Palantir has been equally vigorous, but not always accurate. This week he launched an online video which claimed wrongly that Peter Thiel was its chief executive and called it a spyware company. Moseley challenged this and called it \u201ctechnically defamatory\u201d as spyware is illegal malicious software that enters a user\u2019s computer, but he added \u201cdon\u2019t worry, we are not suing\u201d. Thiel, a Trump-supporting tech billionaire, was Palantir\u2019s co-founder.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a chance to get this dangerous company out of our NHS and all of our public services,\u201d Polanski said. \u201cMinisters must listen to the public and end this appalling contract now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Palantir says its software helps increase the number of NHS<\/a> operations carried out, reduces the time it takes to diagnose cancer, keeps Royal Navy ships at sea for longer, and protects women and children from domestic violence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 200,000 people have called on ministers to break contracts with Palantir in an apparent groundswell of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-547144","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}