Martin Franklin, Shirley Franklin and Jeremy Corbyn at the packed People’s Forum meeting

CAMPAIGNERS are planning mass action to protest patients’ data being handed over to an American AI giant that has a record of being involved in US and Israeli surveillance.

At a packed People’s Forum last Thursday evening, speakers warned against allowing Palantir Technologies access to NHS systems with “highly valuable” patient data.

The company has provided military technology to the Israel Defence Forces and AI-powered deportation targeting for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in the US.

It currently holds UK government contracts worth £500m, and its software is being rolled out in hospital trusts across the country as a centralised data management system.

The Tribune understands that the Whittington has agreed to install the software on orders from the Department of Health and Social Care.

“Palantir is one of the companies which is flying around, trying to pick our NHS apart”, said Martin Franklin, from Defend the Whittington Coalition. “Founder Peter Thiel has urged the government ‘to rip the whole thing from the ground and start again’.”

Campaigners raised concerns regarding privacy, the commercial exploitation of health data, and a culture of expanding state surveillance.

Mr Franklin said: “This [the NHS] is potentially a data goldmine that technology companies like Palantir are very keen to get a hold of because they can scrape that data, they can sell it on to insurance companies and so on and so forth”.

Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn added: “We see no reason why American private sector companies should come in and have any management function whatsoever within our National Health Service as a matter of principle”.

He said that hospital chiefs had agreed with their concerns but felt there was little they could do to defy orders sent by the Department of Health.

Indeed, questions have also been asked about the process by which the $300billion company was awarded the government contracts, and cam­paigners were speaking just days after the links between disgraced former US Ambassador Peter Mandelson and the US tech giant were uncovered.

“This utterly stinks”, said Mr Corbyn of the allegations that Lord Mandelson helped orchestrate a meeting between the prime minister and Palantir just months before a multi-million contract was agreed without the normal due diligence.

Global Counsel, a lobbying company co-founded and part-owned by Lord Mandelson, works for Palantir, and, as ambassador to the US, he arranged an “informal visit” for Keir Starmer to Palantir’s Washington headquarters.

Mr Corbyn said he had raised in parliament “the whole question about the way government operates, the way parliament operates, and the sort of magic government circle around people like Mandelson, and the relationship between them and big business, between media and senior civil servants.”

He added: “This whole nasty network which ends up with people in office who then hand over contracts to very dodgy companies. We saw it all during the Covid crisis, and we’re still seeing it today.”

Campaigners said they will attend a meeting at Islington Council in March to ask councillors to support their demands that the Whittington is never associated with the company.

A spokesperson for Whittington Health NHS Trust said: “We have not yet made any plans to roll out of the Federated Data Platform at Whittington Health.

“We are aware of concerns about the involvement of some of the platform’s partners and will be mindful of them as well as the potential benefits that the system could bring for our patients as we continue consider the issue.”

Last summer Louis Mosley, Palantir’s executive vice-president, said that similar criticisms by the BMA were putting “ideology above patient interest”.

Palantir has previously said: “Where the software is in place it’s delivering benefits to patients and staff – increasing the use of operating theatres, driving down waiting lists and improving the way care is coordinated across the NHS.”