MPs urge UK government to halt contract giving Palantir FCA data access
MPs have urged the government to halt its latest contract with Palantir after the Guardian revealed that the US spy-tech company is to gain access to a trove of highly sensitive UK financial regulation data.The Financial Conduct Authority, the watchdog for thousands of financial bodies from banks to hedge funds, has hired Palantir to apply its AI systems to two years’ worth of internal intelligence data to help it tackle financial crime.But the Liberal Democrats on Monday called for a government investigation into the contract, which the party said could be “a huge error of judgment”, while the Green party said it should be blocked over Palantir’s links to Donald Trump.Questioned on whether the UK was becoming “dangerously overreliant” on US tech companies including Palantir, Keir Starmer told parliament he would prefer to have more domestic capability but added: “I don’t think we’re overreliant.”Palantir was founded by the Trump-backing billionaire Peter Thiel and it supports the US and Israeli militaries and the ICE immigration crackdown.
In the UK it has built up more than £500m in contracts including with the NHS, police and Ministry of Defence.Insiders at the FCA, where security-cleared Palantir staff are to gain access to FCA data in a 12-week trial, have questioned if there are sufficient safeguards to prevent its “data lake” from being exploited in unintended ways.There are concerns about the potential for data about sensitive FCA investigations into high-profile figures to be accessed during Palantir’s work.These have recently included the banker Jes Staley, who was an associate of Jeffrey Epstein, and the hedge fund boss Crispin Odey.The FCA has insisted Palantir will be a “data processor”, not a “data controller”, meaning it could only act on instruction from the regulator.
The FCA said it would retain exclusive control over the encryption keys for the most sensitive files and the data would be hosted and stored solely in the UK.Palantir will have to destroy data after completion of the contract and any intellectual property derived from the data trawling should be retained by the FCA, it said.One insider told the Guardian that the information so far available was “very lacking in details about how the obvious risks would be controlled or limited”.Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrats’ Treasury spokesperson, called for a investigation into the FCA’s Palantir contract and said: “Palantir has spent years embedding itself within the Maga machine.Awarding a contract for sensitive UK financial data to a Trump-aligned tech giant seems like a huge error of judgment.
”The Green party MP Siân Berry said: “Companies like Palantir should have no place within UK government systems when they are closely involved in President Trump’s illegal wars,” She called for the government to “step in immediately and protect our national and economic security by blocking this contract award”,Martin Wrigley, a Liberal Democrat member of the Commons technology committee, said the FCA deal should be “stopped before it’s started”,He said: “We are creating a single behemoth that our UK firms won’t be able to compete against,We should be developing our own industries.
”Palantir’s European boss, Louis Mosley, has recently sought meetings with MPs to address “misconceptions” about its technology.He denies claims Palantir may “use customer data for our own purposes” on the basis this is “something that we have no business interest in, and that we are legally and contractually prevented from doing”.The official announcement of the FCA contract states Palantir will work across “all FCA datasets”, which insiders have said could include personal details, as well as some trading records of banks, hedge funds and pension funds where they relate to cases of potential wrongdoing.Donald Campbell, the director of advocacy at Foxglove, a tech fairness campaign, called the contract “another worrying sign that Palantir is consolidating its hold over UK government services”.He said: “Ministers urgently need to stop and think before handing yet more contracts to this Trump-supporting spy-tech giant.
There is a serious risk of ‘lock-in’ – the more Palantir is enmeshed in the UK’s public services, the harder it may be to get them out.”Palantir said it was proud its software was being used “to support the FCA in their vital work to tackle financial crime”.It said the “data cannot be commercialised in any way” and “the software can only be used – legally and contractually – to process data in strict accordance with the instructions of the customer”.The FCA said the data in the trial would not include trading records and there was no risk of lock-in as it was just a trial.An FCA spokesperson said: “Criminals aren’t slow to use technology to cause harm – we need to stay ahead of them.
We can run a trial to helps us do that while maintaining strict data controls.”HM Treasury has been approached for comment.
Thank you, Keir, for keeping calm | Brief letters
Let’s praise Keir Starmer (UK will not be drawn into wider war in Middle East, says Keir Starmer, 16 March) for remaining calm and statesmanlike in the face of infantile insults and playground bullying, in order to bring about a cessation of Donald Trump’s recklessness.Martin DattaLincoln Moby (‘The lyrics to Lola by the Kinks are gross – I was really taken aback’: Moby’s honest playlist, 22 March) describes the lyrics of Lola as “gross and transphobic”. He says he was “taken aback at how unevolved the lyrics are”. This Kinks’ song came out in 1970, when transitioning wasn’t as openly talked about. Lola was groundbreaking in celebrating a trans character over 50 years ago
What’s at stake for UK in May’s elections: six key questions
On 7 May, three of the UK’s four nations go to the polls in a series of elections with much potential significance, not just for who ends up governing various bodies, but also for the future political direction of the country.Here is what is at stake.In Scotland, voters will select 129 members of the country’s parliament, via a mix of first-past-the-post constituency voting and proportional regional voting. In Wales, a revised proportional system will pick 96 members of an expanded Senedd.In England, there are first-past-the-post votes for members of more than 130 councils of various types – metropolitan, unitary, county, district and 32 London boroughs – as well as for six mayors
‘Unprecedented territory’: are UK polls as volatile as they seem? – in charts
Cabinet reshuffles, party infighting, policy reversals, byelections, defections and apparently huge swings in support – the UK’s political news cycle feels especially relentless at the moment.But if you look closely at the polls since last year’s local elections, remarkably little has changed.While there have been some noticeable individual polls, most movements have been limited to a small number of percentage points. The big parties are roughly where they were. Reform has had a comfortable lead for almost a year
‘Anyone but Labour’ or ‘anyone but Reform’? Clash of animosities likely to define May local elections
Local elections are often regarded as a referendum on the sitting government, with many previous administrations taking a bloody nose from the electorate but successfully fighting back by the next general election.Senior Labour figures have taken to reeling off a list of midterm results – 1999, 2003, 2012 – to prove that point. “As we get closer to the general election, it will be less about people’s view of the parties generally and more about the actual choice in front of them,” one said.But even against that backdrop, this May’s local and devolved elections look to be a uniquely negative series of contests, in part because Nigel Farage now generates as much ill feeling across the country as Keir Starmer.Some voters are urgently hoping to teach the government a lesson, but others want just as strongly to keep Reform UK out of power
The trope of ‘choosing pets over people’ is not new | Letter
Jonn Elledge (What’s worth more: Churchill or a woke badger? Welcome to Britain’s banknote culture war, 16 March) is right that the debate over whether wildlife might replace figures such as Winston Churchill on Bank of England banknotes has become another front in Britain’s culture wars. As he notes, proposals to feature animals are neither unprecedented nor unpopular, with public consultation showing majority support for nature-themed designs.But the backlash relies on a familiar claim: that attention to wildlife represents a misplaced priority – “the definition of woke”, as Nigel Farage put it. This framing is not new. During the 2021 evacuation efforts of animal charity Nowzad in Kabul, the story was reduced to “pets over people”, despite the fact that both animals and staff were saved
James Cleverly says he disagrees with Nick Timothy about Islamic public prayer
James Cleverly has said he disagrees with his Conservative frontbench colleague Nick Timothy’s assertion that public Muslim prayers are an act of domination, as another senior Tory called for the party to respect the right to worship.Kemi Badenoch has defended Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, after he posted images of mass prayer at a Ramadan event on Monday evening in Trafalgar Square, calling it “an act of domination” and “straight from the Islamist playbook”.His remarks sparked significant condemnation, with Keir Starmer calling for Badenoch to sack Timothy; while Richard Hermer, the attorney general, has challenged the Conservative leader to say whether she would object to Jewish prayer in public.In the most open criticism of Timothy by a senior Tory so far, Emma Best, the party’s deputy leader on the London assembly, said prayer was “a fundamental right of every UK citizen” and that if people did not like this, it was their problem.Speaking on BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Cleverly, the shadow communities secretary, said Timothy had been correct to begin a debate about Monday’s “Open Iftar”, the last of 18 such public events at which anyone can join the breaking of the Ramadan fast at dusk
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