DAERA Minister Andrew Muir has welcomed the award of £7.91million in grants to over 2,350 rural community organisations and businesses over the past year.

Communities Minister Gordon Lyons has announced a £50million investment in the Ulster Folk Museum.

First Minister Michelle O’Neill and deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly joined Holocaust survivor Janine Webber and hundreds of others at Belfast City Hall on Tuesday night (20 January) to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

A new seagrass meadow has been discovered at Strangford Lough by a PhD student using DAERA technology.

The Green Party leader has today delivered a notice of contract termination to Palantir which has a seven year £330m contract with the NHS to build FDP, the ‘NHS Federated Data Platform’ to link and manage patient data.

Green Party leader Zack Polanski said:

“I have today handed a letter to Palantir serving it notice to pack its bags and get the hell out of the NHS.

“This Trump supporting military surveillance outfit has no place in Britain’s most important institution. The NHS cares for patients and brings our country together. Palantir’s most recent history is to actively aid and abet genocide in Gaza and to provide surveillance data for Trump’s paramilitary ICE squads, currently causing death and mayhem on the streets of America.

“When Wes Streeting can take some time out from meeting his private health donors, he should cancel this contract right now. If he doesn’t, my letter today to Palantir makes clear we will use every method at our disposal to force them out. Doctors have made clear they do not trust Palantir with patients’ private data, and with its appalling track record, I am with the doctors”. 

There will be a review of the contract in 2027, with the UK government’s Contracts Finder database showing a formal contract end date of 15 February 2027 – so the government could end it then.  

The contract was awarded by NHS England in 2023 by the Conservative Government. Palantir is also known to have close links to the Labour government, and it has been reported that the corporation hired Peter Mandelson to lobby the Labour Government to help them win more government contracts.

Palantir is an American technology company that specialises in artificial intelligence powered military and surveillance technology and data analytics and was founded by the Trump donor Peter Thiel.

The BMA last year passed a formal resolution calling for the Palantir NHS contract to be cancelled saying it, “threatens to undermine public trust in NHS data systems” and is unclear how the sensitive patient data would be processed by Palantir, citing the firm’s track record of creating discriminatory policing software in the US” and its “close links to a US government which shows little regard for international law”.

The Government has mandated providers and Integrated Care Boards to Palantir’s Federated Data Platform (FDP) to ‘start making use of core products, data capabilities and population health management tools by 2028/29, according to the Medium Term Planning Framework published by the Department of Health.

However, according to NHS figures, fewer than a quarter of England’s 215 hospital trusts were actively using FDP by the end of 2024. Some Trust’s are on record as questioning its functionality and purpose.

Zack Polanski’s letter to Palantir CEO Alex Karp:

Dear Alex,

I am today putting you on notice that the Green Party of England and Wales is calling for your contract with the NHS to be cancelled.

We object to your involvement in the NHS on three main grounds:

1. We do not trust you with the use of people’s health data. Your track record around the world of surveillance and discriminatory use of data contributing to abuses and genocide means we don’t believe you a fit partner for the NHS, an institution that has served this country with distinction since 1948.

2. You have actively aided the genocide in Gaza. In January 2024, you signed a deal with the IDF to increase its “advanced technology provision” to Israel in support of war related missions. You have said that you are “exceedingly proud” of Palantir’s involvement in what you called “operationally crucial in Israel.” The UN special rapporteur on human rights identified Palantir as complicit in war crimes and “profiting from genocide” in Gaza.

3. It has been reported that you are working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address. We are strongly of the view that ICE is acting like a personalised paramilitary police force to Donald Trump, and recently shot dead Renee Good in cold blood. We stand in solidarity with her.

Further, I know that companies such as yours hire corporate lobbyists such as Peter Mandelson to assess ‘political risk’. I have some advice you can have for free. The political risk is very high for your continuing involvement with the NHS. The Green Party is advancing, and we will use every means at our disposal, including that of our many thousands of members to get you out of the NHS. We will form alliances with like-minded campaigners and MPs, of all parties, so that the pressure on the Government to cancel your NHS contract becomes too great. Whatever happens at the next general election, we will use whatever influence we have to insist on your removal from the NHS.

My understanding is that there is real hesitation among hospital trusts and Integrated Care Boards to use your platform, and from my conversations with people in the NHS, they don’t believe it offers anything they can’t already access, and that it has little to no impact on patient care or reducing waiting times for treatment.

Yours sincerely,

Zack Polanski, Leader of the Green Party in England and Wales

The Green Party objects to the use of Palantir on three main grounds:  

1. We do not trust Palantir and the Labour Government with the use of people’s health data. Aside from Palantir’s own disgraceful role in the genocide in Gaza, we also note the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood recently told the Tony Blair Institute that she wanted to use AI and surveillance data so that ‘the eyes of the state can be on you at all times’. The Labour Government is persistently pursing authoritarian policies, including prescribing Palestine Action, abolishing jury trials and attempting to introduce digital ID.

2. Palantir has aided the genocide in Gaza. In January 2024, Palantir signed a deal with the IDF to increase its “advanced technology provision” to Israel in support of war related missions. Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp says he is “exceedingly proud” of Palantir’s involvement in what he calls “operationally crucial operations in Israel.” The UN special rapporteur on human rights identified Palantir as complicit in war crimes and “profiting from genocide” in Gaza.

3. It has been reported in the past two days that Palantir is working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address. We believe ICE is acting like a personalised paramilitary police force to Donald Trump, and it recently shot Renee Good dead in cold blood. 

Adblock test (Why?)