Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, is reportedly prepared to terminate any Palantir NHS contract tied to his region, citing the American data analytics company’s documented work for the Israeli military and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to International Business Times UK.
The move would be among the most concrete political actions taken by a senior UK official against Palantir on ethical grounds — going beyond calls for review and into outright rejection of a procurement relationship.
What the Palantir NHS contract actually covers
Palantir secured a high-profile deal with NHS England in 2023 to build the Federated Data Platform, a system designed to help hospitals manage patient waitlists, supply chains, and staff rotas across England. The contract was worth up to £330 million over seven years and was immediately controversial, with privacy advocates warning about concentrating sensitive patient data inside a company with deep ties to government surveillance work in the United States.
The non-obvious detail that sharpened this controversy: Palantir’s commercial healthcare work and its defense and law enforcement contracts are run under the same corporate roof. The company does not operate a firewall between its NHS data work and the divisions that serve ICE deportation operations or provide battlefield analytics to the Israeli Defense Forces. Critics argue that structural reality makes ethical separation impossible regardless of contractual language.
Burnham is specifically concerned about that overlap. Greater Manchester’s NHS trusts operate with a degree of regional autonomy, giving the mayor political leverage to push back against national procurement decisions when local values are at stake.
Burnham’s position and why it breaks from Westminster
The Greater Manchester mayor has long positioned himself to the left of the national Labour government on economic and social policy. His willingness to break with Keir Starmer’s administration over this deal marks a tangible split between city-region politics and Whitehall’s more cautious handling of the Palantir relationship.
Westminster has not moved to cancel the NHS data deal, and the Department of Health and Social Care has defended Palantir’s involvement on technical and operational grounds. Burnham’s reported stance challenges that position directly, and health campaigners in Manchester have been pushing him for months to make a formal break.
The timing also matters. Protests by NHS staff and patient groups over Palantir’s ICE contracts intensified after reporting in 2025 confirmed the company’s data tools were used to identify and track undocumented immigrants in the United States. That documentation gave UK opponents a concrete grievance beyond abstract privacy concerns.
Palantir’s defense contracts fuel the backlash
Founded in 2003 with early funding from the CIA’s venture arm In-Q-Tel, Palantir has never hidden its work for intelligence and military clients — co-founder Peter Thiel has called it a patriotic mission. The company’s Maven Smart System contract with the U.S. Department of Defense and its analytics support for Israeli military operations in Gaza have drawn sustained criticism from technologists and human rights organizations alike.
For NHS campaigners, the argument is straightforward: a company earning revenue from systems used in conflict zones and deportation infrastructure should not also hold one of the most sensitive healthcare data contracts in the world. Palantir disputes that its commercial and government work creates any ethical conflict, but has not publicly addressed Burnham’s reported position specifically.
The ethical concerns around AI-driven surveillance tools and public healthcare data are not unique to this case. Earlier this year, questions about AI voice cloning in media prompted debate about tech boundaries — as seen when a Netflix production used AI to replicate Gene Wilder’s voice without his family’s full endorsement, raising similar questions about consent and corporate power over sensitive assets.
What Greater Manchester’s rejection would mean in practice
Greater Manchester is one of the most structurally integrated regional health systems in England, operating as a devolved health and care partnership. If Burnham formalizes his opposition and directs local NHS trusts to avoid Palantir tools, it would create a visible patchwork in the national Federated Data Platform rollout — some hospitals using the system, others opting out — which could complicate interoperability and data sharing across regional boundaries.
It would also set a precedent. Other metro mayors, particularly in London and West Yorkshire, face similar pressure from local campaigners. A successful opt-out in Greater Manchester would give them both a political template and a legal pathway to follow.
NHS England has not indicated whether it would allow regional trusts to exit the Palantir arrangement without financial penalty. That question — who bears the cost of an ethical exit — will likely define the next phase of the debate, and Burnham’s legal and financial advisers are expected to examine the contract terms before any formal announcement is made.
Advocacy groups including openDemocracy, which has reported extensively on the Palantir NHS deal since its signing, are watching the Greater Manchester situation as a potential test case for democratic accountability over public health data contracts.
