UK

Keep corporate hands off NHS data!

JULY 13, 2025

By Sally Hobbs

In Greater Manchester, Unite the Union and mental health campaigners are leading a campaign to protect our NHS data from a US private tech intelligence company, which provides information to the Israeli and US military among others.

Unite’s Greater Manchester Mental Health  Branch and CHARM (Communities for Holistic Accessible Rights based Mental Health) are seeking to widen their campaign of support by asking organisations and residents in the region to sign their Open Letter to the Integrated Care Board and the Mayor’s office to call on them to stop Palantir Technologies being used in Manchester’s NHS services via a Federated Data Platform (FDP). The signs are that the campaign is having some success. UNISON’s Greater Manchester Mental Health Branch is also backing the Letter.

Palantir was recently awarded a £330-£480 million contract to handle NHS data. As a result of public pressure, the Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board (GM ICB) at its meeting on 30th June decided to defer joining the national contract for six months. A letter from Mark Fisher, Chief Executive of GM ICB, confirmed a pause while they assess whether to allow NHS local data to  be given to Palantir.

His letter advised the decision to defer was to assess “value for money” alongside the impact on public trust in NHS. It says they welcome “further evidence of public concern that you have provided. We regularly feed these views and concerns back to NHS England and will also continue to include them in our own assessment of public trust and potential inequality. We will keep our decision to defer under review in terms of understanding the full local costs of ownership; the potential benefits that engagement with FDP might bring for GM; and the expressed wishes of the local population.”

 Palantir is a company that specialises in providing the technology used in ‘smart bombs’, drone strikes, mass surveillance and racial profiling, including supporting the Israeli government’s assault on the people of Gaza. As the Open Letter says, in something of an understatement, “Palantir’s history is not one aligned with the values of the NHS.”

In 2024, Palantir’s founder Peter Thiel even suggested that the NHS “makes people sick.”

Awarding data infrastructure contracts of this scale to private tech firms like Palantir represents another form of NHS privatisation, argues the Open Letter. The NHS should be investing in open-source, public-interest technology that is affordable, transparent, and accountable to patients and professionals alike.

The Integrated Care Board says it will review the deferral again in six months’ time. Campaigners have now decided to open up their Letter more widely. All who live, work or study in Greater Manchester are being asked to sign the Open Letter and to table resolutions in support of this to their trade unions, Labour Party branches and health campaign organisations especially.   

The organisers say they will continue to put pressure on the ICB and Mayoral office over the coming months, saying, “We welcome ideas and support in amplifying our voice and concerns.”

The efforts of campaigners in Manchester underline the urgency of a national campaign to prevent this use of our public data is clear.

Please click on this link to sign the letter here.

Sally Hobbs is a Palestine supporter and activist in Manchester.

Image: Healthcare terms word cloud. Source: word cloud generator. Author: wordclouds.com, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.