‘Hands off our NHS’: Anti-Palantir protests erupt in UK over deal with NHS

“It’s exactly the use case where you’re not outsourcing, and you’re certainly not outsourcing offshore,” Laura Gilbert, director of artificial intelligence at the Tony Blair Institute, a think tank founded by the former prime minister, tells WIRED. “We should learn from that data and build a better health service, not allow an outside company to learn and build better products that they can sell to someone else.”

The federal data platform helps patients “while saving money for NHS teams and taxpayers,” Ayoub Bhayat, director of data and analytics at the NHS, tells WIRED.

“There is no requirement to use it,” he says.

Stephen Childs, head of UK health partnerships at Palantir, says the program “helps deliver better patient care – including an additional 110,000 procedures, a 15 per cent reduction in hospital discharge delays, nearly 800,000 patients removed from waiting lists and a 6.8 per cent increase in the number of patients finding out they have cancer within 28 days of referral”.

In early June, MPs published a report warning that the UK’s increasing reliance on Palantir represented an “unacceptable vulnerability”. The parliamentary committee said the company was on its way to becoming heavily involved in the public sector, giving it enormous influence over the British state. The report also described a “clear mismatch with UK values”.

After the report was published, UK Technology Minister Liz Kendall said the government was conducting a review of “every aspect” of the NHS contract with Palantir before deciding whether to go ahead with the deal.

Responding to the report in a Telegraph op-ed, Mosley accused MPs of “putting politics above patients” and raising concerns about the company potentially misusing its access to sensitive health data. “Each NHS organization controls its own data; Palantir cannot use, sell or transfer it,” he wrote.

Whether the government decides to go ahead with the NHS contract or not, Palantir has shown it is willing to resist attempts to expel it from the UK public sector. According to The Times, the company is preparing to sue the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who blocked a $65 million deal with the Metropolitan Police, citing concerns about the purchase and “values.”

Two hours after the demonstrations began, the demonstrators withdrew to a café next to the nearby public library.

The group expressed optimism that the momentum seen behind calls to remove Palantir from the NHS has amplified, particularly in the wake of the parliamentary report. “We have this really big opportunity right now, because of the break clause,” says Lorkin, co-founder of Pull the Plug.

But there is also a world in which renewed public interest in the Palantir issue could backfire, some feel, if the government decides to go ahead with the contract. Another protester, who gave his name as JJ and identified himself as an NHS practitioner, says he is concerned that Palantir’s poor reputation could make already nervous patients think twice before volunteering information to their healthcare provider, with implications for their care. “We know people don’t want to tell us everything,” says JJ. “People don’t really trust them. They’ll just keep quiet.” “We will have less information and less history to be able to help people.”

Additional reporting by Isabella Ward.

Updated 6/12/2026 at 9:40 a.m. ET: This story has been updated to include a statement from Palantir and data on the benefits of the technology.