In the face of some confronting questions from parliament’s science and tech committee, security minister Dan Jarvis has said the US firm’s latest mega contract will bring investment and jobs
The latest government deal worth hundreds of millions of pounds won by controversial US tech giant Palantir “represents a vote of confidence in the UK”, according to the security minister Dan Jarvis.
In a recent session of parliament’s Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, member Martin Wrigley asked Jarvis – who was appearing alongside digital government minister Ian Murray – whether he was “comfortable with the increasing prevalence of companies such as Palantir in the public sector – especially in sensitive areas of NHS and defence [and] trials going on within police forces and… the Cabinet Office”.
The question comes in light of a £240m deal – effectively a contract extension – awarded to the analytics firm by the Ministry of Defence without any competitive process, owing to what government has said was “an absence of competition for technical reasons”.
Jarvis told MPs: “To give you assurance, let me say first that there are robust processes in place to make sure that government contracts are always awarded fairly and transparently… My understanding is that Palantir is a long-standing investor in the United Kingdom. As would have been the case with previous governments, this government utilise a range of international suppliers based on operational requirements, value for money, and compliance with our legal and security obligations. All suppliers are subject to a rigorous process of due diligence.”
The minister concluded that the MoD’s agreement with Palantir should be seen as a mutual endorsement – given that a large tech firm is opting to invest time and resources in this country.
“The recent partnership arrangements that have been announced… actually, [they] represent a vote of confidence in the UK that we have companies that want to work with the UK government and want to invest in us as an entity,” he said. “This will deliver very significant amounts of investment, which creates highly skilled jobs in the UK.”
In addition to the defence deal, Palantir already holds a potential £500m contract to deliver the NHS’s Federated Data Platform. The US-headquartered tech company’s increasing role in supporting the UK public sector has been subject to scrutiny and criticism in recent years.
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A 2020 report from Amnesty International found that the tech supplier’s work supporting the US immigration and security agencies has created “a high risk that Palantir is contributing to serious human rights violations”.
The human-rights charity has described the company as “a very troubling choice of service provider for the NHS, while the chair of the British Medical Association union described the decision to use the company for the NHS FDP as “deeply worrying”.
‘Sovereignty and security’
As well as reflecting ethical concerns, Wrigley grilled Jarvis and Murray about whether the use of large tech firms for major contracts creates security issues for government as a result of “the reliance on a single vendor across so many critical areas… [including] several very serious areas in our national infrastructure”.
In response, Murray said that central spending controls administered by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology mean that he and his ministerial colleagues “can interrogate the contracts, the value for money, the sovereignty, and whether they comply with the government’s security and privacy principles” – before a deal is awarded.
“DSIT works with individual departments in making sure that their tendering processes and contract award processes fit in with the government agenda and those government protections,” he said. “There are a number of layers of DSIT assurance processes that sit outside each individual government department, and we would expect every government department to apply those principles. That then comes back to DSIT in order for us to both help it shape what it is looking for and shape its contracts, but also to make sure that it is complying with all the government policies on data security and principles, and those kinds of sovereignty issues you raise.”
At the end of a robust exchange Wrigley, the Liberal Democrat MP for Newton Abbot, told the two ministers that: “It sounds like you are writing off UK start-ups in favour of an established American big player because ‘nobody ever got fired for buying IBM’” – alluding to a tech-industry maxim concerning many buyers’ risk-averse approach to new or smaller suppliers.
Jarvis, whose role is split across the Home Office and Cabinet Office, told Wrigley: “That is an entirely unreasonable conclusion to draw from what we have both just said.”
In DSIT, the digital economy minister Baroness Liz Lloyd recently revealed that the tech department “will shortly be publishing a stretching target and action plan for our procurement spending with small and medium enterprises, most of which will be UK-based”.
The evidence given by Jarvis and Murray related to the committee’s ongoing enquiry into government data security. In a wide-ranging session, members were also told by senior civil servants about government’s wish to clamp down on the use of email attachments via through “cultural change, guidance and technological solutions”.
