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,
Estate of Mike Lynch ordered to pay £920m to Hewlett-Packard
The estate of late British tech tycoon Mike Lynch has been ordered to pay £920m to the technology company Hewlett-Packard (HP) two years after he died in a superyacht disaster.The ruling by London’s high court said the estate was liable to pay the sum as compensation, costs and interest for HP’s acquisition of Lynch’s firm Autonomy, after a UK legal ruling in 2022 that he duped the US firm into paying £8.2bn for his software firm Autonomy.The deceased entrepreneur’s estate has been estimated to be worth about £500m, so the damages could leave it bankrupt.Lynch and six others, including his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, died in August 2024 on a trip with friends and family celebrating his acquittal on US fraud charges relating to HP’s $11bn takeover of Autonomy in 2011
Energy price shock and interest rate rises could cause ‘pronounced’ UK recession, economist warns – as it happened
Britain’s economy could be dragged into recession by the end of this year by high energy prices and interest rate hikes, economists at Morgan Stanley have warned.Following this morning’s data showing a slowdown in private sector growth this month and a surge in input costs (see 9.41am), Morgan Stanley economist Bruna Skarica has warned that the energy price shock is likely to prompt the Bank of England to raise interest rates, which would hurt growth.Skarica points out that oil prices have risen by around 40% since January, with natural gas contracts up by around 80%, prompted the financial markets to predict the BoE will raise rates this year.Skarica told clients:double quotation markShould these financial conditions and commodity prices be sustained in the coming months, we would be calling for a pronounced UK recession at the turn of the year
Divide between Silicon Valley and ordinary people grows ever larger
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery. This week in tech, we discuss a moment of divergence between Silicon Valley and everyday people; deep cuts at Meta to maximize spending on AI; writers caught using AI; and the frightening, fiery crashes of the Tesla Cybertruck.Nvidia hosted a conference last week where it emphasized AI agents – semi-autonomous chatbots that can perform digital tasks for you – as the next frontier in tech. The company announced a toolkit for agents, including NemoClaw, an AI agent software suite for businesses
Amount of AI-generated child sexual abuse material found online surged in 2025
The amount of AI-generated child sexual abuse material found online rose by 14% last year, with the majority of videos showing the most extreme type of content, according to a safety watchdog.The Internet Watch Foundation said it identified 8,029 AI-made images and videos of realistic child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in 2025. It added that there had been a more than 260-fold increase in videos.The IWF said 65% of the 3,443 videos were classified as category A, the term for the most severe material under UK law. The corresponding figure for non-AI videos was 43%, said the watchdog, showing that the technology was being used to create more violent content
World Snooker Championship to remain at Crucible until at least 2045 with revamp
Barry Hearn concedes he has let his heart rule his head for the first time in his career after striking a remarkable new long-term deal to keep snooker’s world championship at the Crucible Theatre – before hinting that his son Eddie was among those who were against the decision.The tournament has been played at the 980-seat venue in Sheffield since 1977, and it will remain there until at least 2045 with an option to extend to 2050 after World Snooker Tour and Sheffield city council agreed a contract to ensure snooker’s most prestigious event will stay at its spiritual home.As part of the agreement, the Crucible will undergo a renovation after the 2028 tournament, with the venue securing £45m of government investment that Hearn admitted was decisive in keeping snooker in Sheffield. An extra 500 seats will be installed at the theatre, taking capacity to 1500.It is a striking and notable agreement for the sport, not least because Hearn himself had made loud noises in recent years about the need for a completely rebuilt Crucible with at least 3,000 seats if the world championship was to remain in Sheffield amid interest from places such as Saudi Arabia and China
West Ham stadium stance could block London’s World Athletics Championships bid, warns Coe
Sebastian Coe has warned that London’s bid for the 2029 World Athletics Championships could be scuppered by West Ham’s refusal to allow their stadium to be used in September.World Athletics has made it clear to bidding cities, which the Guardian understands also includes Rome, Munich and Nairobi as well as a mooted Indian city, that the world championships should be the grand finale to the athletics season.However West Ham are so far refusing to vacate their stadium for around three weeks in September, despite the London bid having the strong backing of the government and the mayor’s office.“It’s really difficult for me because I have a view, but I have to be scrupulously neutral, because London is clearly not the only bid out there,” said Lord Coe. “All I would say is that I would hope that there is a recognition that outside the Olympic Games and the World Cup, this is the third-largest sporting gathering in a four-year cycle
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