From Manchester to Downing Street: What Burnham could mean for Palantir
London, United Kingdom – Should Andy Burnham enter Downing Street as early as July 17, if he is confirmed unopposed as Labour leader, one of
London, United Kingdom – Should Andy Burnham enter Downing Street as early as July 17, if he is confirmed unopposed as Labour leader, one of his most consequential early decisions will have nothing to do with defence spending, immigration, or the economy. It will concern a seven-year 330-million-pound ($440m) contract between NHS England and Palantir Technologies, a leading defence and intelligence software firm in the United States that received no contracts from Burnham’s Greater Manchester administration during his nine years as mayor. The ramifications of such a decision could extend well beyond the NHS. Media reports surfaced last week that Burnham is minded to hold that line with Palantir across all of the UK government when he arrives in Downing Street. When approached by Al Jazeera, an Andy Burnham spokesperson said: “We’re not going to comment on individual government procurement contracts or companies and there are legal processes that must be followed. “However, in general, Andy’s guiding principles on procurement are that we need to be getting value for money for the taxpayer and that we need to be safeguarding people’s data and British interests.” For a company that has spent six years embedding itself across several public sector entities – the NHS, the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office, the Financial Conduct Authority – that posture is a real shift from the outgoing Labour administration led by Keir Starmer.
Starmer’s government actively courted US-based AI companies championed by the former UK ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson. According to the Financial Times, which cited people briefed on the discussions, Burnham’s advisers, including former tech minister Josh Simons, are working with researchers Antonio Weiss and Martha Dacombe on a new AI strategy prioritising British companies and workers. The story of how we got here runs through Manchester. The Manchester precedent Burnham served as Mayor of Greater Manchester from 2017 until June, when he returned to Westminster via the Makerfield by-election. Under his leadership, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority issued no contracts to Palantir. Greater Manchester Police has separately confirmed it did not have a Palantir contract in the past five years. The more instructive precedent, though, is in the NHS – an institution Burnham has no direct mayoral authority over, but shaped politically through Greater Manchester’s landmark health devolution settlement. Rather than adopt the NHS England-mandated Federated Data Platform, built on Palantir’s Foundry software, Greater Manchester’s NHS leaders spent six years building their own analytics infrastructure instead. That became a proof of concept, which allies now cite nationally: effective NHS data management, they argue, does not require Palantir. In May, Al Jazeera spoke to the Good Law Project about its concerns that Palantir was a “potential security risk”.
The BriefWire