THE UK CEO of US spy-tech firm Palantir has said his company's ties with the defence sector, including the Israeli army and US immigration enforcement, are not hugely unpopular with healthcare workers and the general public, despite backlash against the firm's NHS England contract.
While appearing on Sky News, Louis Mosley, grandson of Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), was asked if he understands "why people who work in health don't particularly want to partner with a company that helps to deliver death."
Mosley went on to describe the backlash from NHS England staff against the company's contract with the English health service as coming from a "noisy" minority, claiming that most people welcome the company's plans to reduce waiting times.
He said that he challenges "the characterisation that there is a lot of pushback. I think that there is a minority that is noisy, but in an organisation that employs 1.5 million people, as the NHS does, you would be surprised not to discover the full range of views about every conceivable topic."
When questioned on if he "understands the pushback" and how it is "quite rare to see an industry like health partnering with a firm that is so big in defence", Mosley said "I think most people are concerned with a healthcare system that works. They want their operations delivered on time and efficiently, and the fact that we work also in defence is not the primary issue".
He went on to say that it is "not my experience" that the defence-links are a major concern of many people, saying most people "want our NHS to work, they want our armed forces to be as effective as they possible can [be], the fact that we work with both doesn't preclude working with the other, there isn't a contradiction there."
"We're helping public services, whatever form they may be, be the best version they can be, be the best versions of themselves," he added.
Palantir focuses on cloud storage and surveillance technology and is owned by Donald Trump ally Peter Thiel. It has been identified as “profiting from genocide” in Gaza according to Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, and a UK Government committee report found a "concerning" overreliance on the firm's tech in the public sector.
It currently holds more than £670 million in UK public sector contracts, including a £330m contract with NHS England relating to patient data, and a £240m contract with the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
In June the firm also won a £9m contract to supply and manage the software behind licensing for firearms, explosives and poison.
Staff in NHS England have been protesting the firm's involvement in the healthcare provider. More than 80,000 people have now signed a petition started by the Good Law Project calling on the tech firm's contract to be scrapped.
A briefing by non-profit organisation Medact, an organisation which aims to "bring together health workers to fight for health justice", was sent to the chief executives of every NHS trust and Integrated Care Board (ICB) in March urging them not to comply with instructions to adopt Palantir's Federated Data Platform.
It warned of the "serious risks" such a contract poses, arguing that the company's links to the IDF, the US military and its involvement in "predictive policing, deportations and surveillance ops" should have excluded it from NHS procurement entirely.
The Green Party has also called on the removal of IDF-linked Palantir from the NHS, putting the firm “on notice” and calling for its multi-million-pound contract with the NHS to be cancelled over its involvement in the genocide in Gaza, its work with ICE and a distrust of its use of people’s health data.
Kristyan Benedict, Amnesty International UK's crisis response manager, has also called on the removal of Palantir from the NHS, saying "a company profiting from such grave human rights abuses should have no role in our health system or wider public sector."
Commenting after the report into Palantir's "concerning" role in the public sector, a UK Government spokesperson said: “Digital platforms are already making a real difference to public services, and the NHS Federated Data Platform is joining up care, speeding up cancer diagnoses and ensuring thousands of additional patients can be treated each month, with strict data security requirements in place.
“More broadly, our Roadmap for Digital Government sets out a detailed programme of reform with clear milestones and ongoing progress tracking already in place. We are also acting to reduce reliance on any single tech supplier, with protecting citizens' data and ensuring value for taxpayers at the heart of everything we do.
"We welcome the committee's report and will consider its recommendations carefully."
