A recently released set of communications involving Peter Mandelson raises serious questions about how a US surveillance technology company came to win hundreds of millions of pounds worth of NHS contracts.
Mandelson (you know the one – the friend of the paedophile Epstein which Starmer hired in spite of this being common knowledge to everyone) co-founded a lobbying firm that counted Palantir among its clients. That same firm played a role in building support for Palantir’s entry into the UK health system. The documents show Mandelson personally invited the Prime Minister to meet Palantir’s founder, and that he was attending high-profile tech forums alongside senior Palantir executives.
Palantir is not a neutral software supplier. It is a US company with deep roots in intelligence and surveillance work, founded by Peter Thiel, a billionaire with significant political interests.
It won its initial NHS contract for just £1 during the pandemic, then picked up over £60 million in follow-on work without any competitive tender. It later won a £330 million contract for the NHS Federated Data Platform after a procurement process that attracted widespread criticism.
For those of us who care about public data, democratic accountability, and reducing dependence on powerful tech corporations, this story is deeply troubling. Patient data is some of the most sensitive information that exists. Decisions about who handles it should be made transparently, in the public interest, not shaped by lobbying relationships and private meetings.
This is exactly the kind of story that shows why vendor lock-in and big tech influence in public services are not just abstract concerns. They have real consequences for real people.
Read the full article over at The Register: