All of that has now turned out to be false. Today we can reveal that right as health secretary Matt Hancock was heralding the new vaccine and telling Britons life would be getting “back to normal” by Easter, his government was quietly sealing a lucrative deal with Palantir, worth up to £23 million, to run its massive health datastore for two years. The contract, awarded on 11 December, paves the way for Palantir to play a major, long-term role in the NHS beyond COVID – now, even by the government’s own admission.
It’s still not clear what precisely Palantir has been given access to: the list of NHS datasets that the firm will draw on have been redacted from the contract. What is clear, though, is that the government deliberately struck this deal on the quiet – knowing it would be controversial.
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