When I arrived at the BBC Politics Live studio Monday morning, I was not expecting a face-to-face confrontation with Louis Mosley, the executive vice-chair and head of Palantir Technologies UK. I knew I had to pull myself together to make sure I properly represented those who are concerned about a defence tech company embedding themselves in public institutions. Palantir has ties to Israel and America’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency. Yet this is the company that has been trusted to work with our health data in the NHS. Mosley’s appearance on the BBC suggested to me that Palantir is feeling the pressure. From the widespread reaction I’ve received from our exchange – from senior executives working in the city to teachers – I have no doubt that we are getting closer to kicking them out of our NHS.
My first instinct was to speak out in support of the people of Palestine and Lebanon. I hate it when people act like making this a focus of your activism or rationale for who you are going to vote for is somehow fringe or not enough. How can the genocide in Gaza not be a good enough reason to speak out and take action? The contracts are explicit, with Israel and Palantir signing a strategic partnership in 2024 that states their aim to “harness Palantir’s advanced technology in support of war-related missions”.
The company’s role in helping Ice track and deport undocumented migrants has also been exposed by investigative journalists. In addition, Palantir has been accused of creating predictive policing tools that reinforce racial bias in law enforcement. Its founder, Peter Thiel, has said that he “no longer believe[s] that freedom and democracy are compatible”, and that our affection for the NHS is a case of Stockholm syndrome.
The question is simple: how can you trust such a company with our most sensitive data? Mosley read out a long list of ways in which he felt Palantir was helping the NHS, including early cancer diagnosis times and reducing discharge delays. The Labour MP on the show also made this an issue of NHS efficiency and modernisation too. No one is arguing we don’t need to increase efficiency in the NHS, but surely there are other, more trustworthy companies – not owned by a right-wing US billionaire – who can help better manage our NHS data?
Mosley also pointed out that Palantir had started the Ice contract under Barack Obama, using this to argue that the company was not political. Firstly, it is political to engage in the systematic surveillance of communities, regardless of which administration is in place. Secondly, his logic prompts the question: how will this company behave under a Reform government?
As the executive director of Tax Justice UK, I think both about the regressive way we collect our taxes, and how it is spent. The NHS is being fleeced by private companies – new research shows that private firms made £1.6bn in profits in two years, on contracts worth £12bn. But Palantir is not just a problem of profiteering from our national healthcare system – it is a fundamental threat to the democratic control of our public infrastructure and the privacy of every citizen. And by giving our hard-earned taxes to this company, we are aiding their operations everywhere. Moreover, Palantir isn’t just making money from NHS contracts; the company also has contracts with the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office and various local authorities.
Like many large companies, Palantir is deft at deploying loopholes to minimise paying tax. In the US, Palantir paid no federal income tax in 2025, despite being awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in public contracts and seeing huge growth. It is right that taxpayers in this country should expect companies benefiting from public contracts to pay their fair share of tax. Otherwise, this looks like corporate extraction from the public purse.
How did they get this contract? Mosley argued it was won through a competitive process, and that may well be the case. But it is also the case that Palantir began supplying services to the NHS during Covid, at a time when many deals were being awarded with little scrutiny. Fast-forward to February 2025, and we have the since-disgraced ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson reportedly involved in arranging for Keir Starmer to visit Palantir’s showroom in Washington DC. The whole thing reeks of the well-connected affecting our state infrastructure.
The NHS is arguably our most moral institution, a source of true pride that resonates with people across the population regardless of demographics. But by using our taxpayers’ money to help fund Palantir’s work, we are blackening the very values that sit at the heart of the creation of the NHS. Companies like Palantir may not have many qualms about who they do business with, but we – as taxpayers – should. Our taxes give us the power to exercise our right to protest how our money is spent.
[Further reading: You’re probably going to end up in an HMO]
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