The demo outside Frederick’s

A CROWD of protesters gathered outside at a Labour Party fundraiser on Sunday after learning Wes Streeting was a special guest.

Members paid £130 for a dinner at Frederick’s and a chance to hear the health secretary speak.

But there were heckles at the front door of the restaurant in Angel from demonstrators who want the government to pull the plug on its NHS patient record deal with AI tech giant Palantir.

The government is engaged in contracts worth over £500 million with the US company, including £330 million worth of data services for the health service. Human rights groups and campaigners say the tools have been used for surveillance by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in deportation raids as well as in military technology in Israel.

The Tribune reported last month that the Whittington and Royal Free hospitals had agreed to use Palantir software in the future, although it will not be introduced until 2028 at the earliest.

Palantir was founded by Peter Thiel, a Trump-supporting billionaire who previously described the British people’s endearment for the publicly owned NHS as ‘Stockholm Syndrome’.

Shirley Franklin, co-chair of the Defend Whittington Hospital Coalition, which organised the protest, said: “It’s pathetic how these people have paid £130 just to waltz through the picket line whilst knowing what this government is doing to the NHS. Wes and this government are complete sell-outs: they’ve been tricking people by claiming that NHS waiting lists are down whilst they sell it off to the highest bidder. We’re here to campaign against Wes on three issues: cuts to services and staff, contracts with Palantir who now have their fingers all over our personal health data, and the reintroduction of Private Finance Initiative (PFI).”

Wes Streeting

Dr Jonathan Fluxman, a retired GP who worked in the NHS for 25 years, said that Mr Streeting was a “pretend friend” of the NHS, who was actively engaged in privatising the service.

He told the Tribune: “Mr Streeting is unfit for office and should resign. He is taking large sums of money from private companies like Palantir who want lucrative contracts to provide healthcare to the public. The effect is that our personal health data ends up in the hands of a private company embedded in the military-surveillance system in the US and Israel.”

Dr Fluxman, who grew up in Apartheid South Africa but relocated to the UK and studied medicine here, said that the NHS’s public ownership model was one of the UK’s best assets and should be protected at all costs.

He further warned that the introduction of PFI funding schemes and privatisation of the NHS risked cascading down a slippery slope that could ultimately lead to a US-style healthcare system, in which ordinary people are put out of pocket just to pay for their own essential healthcare.

Downing Street spinners claimed Mr Streeting was planning a leadership coup earlier this year, only for them to reverse on the claim.

More recently, the health secretary has had to distance himself from his one-time close friend Lord Peter Mandelson after revelations in the Epstein file.

Lord Mandelson was himself treated as a star guest on Labour’s campaign trail in Islington at the last election, before more was known about his friendship with the trafficker.

A Palantir spokesperson said: “We are humbled to serve the NHS and proud that our software is helping to improve patient care and reduce waiting lists – having delivered 100,000 additional operations and counting. But that is what we do – provide software. We have no interest in selling or commercialising data in any way, and, in any case, we are legally and contractually prevented from doing so, with the customer in full control.”

In relation to the founders’ past comments about the NHS, they added: “Peter Thiel made those comments as a private individual and our CEO has made it clear he firmly disagrees with them and that he wishes ‘we had a health care system in the US that served the poor and underserved as well as I perceive the British system does’.”

The Islington Labour Party said Mr Streeting was a guest for “part” of the event, and that protesters outside were entitled to express their views and it had not disrupted the event.