Palestine solidarity campaigners and the Green Party have welcomed London mayor Sadiq Khan’s decision to block a £50m ($67m) Metropolitan Police deal with Palantir, while warning that “smaller contracts are still in play”.
Khan blocked what would have been the US tech company’s biggest contract with UK police on Thursday, citing a “clear and serious breach” of procurement rules.
The Met had been in talks to use Palantir’s AI technology to automate intelligence analysis in criminal investigations, the Guardian reported.
Palantir already has contracts with the UK’s Ministry of Defence and the National Health Service (NHS). The company is implicated in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and occupation of the West Bank through a deal with the Israeli defence ministry and Israel’s use of its technology.
In February 2026, the Met police awarded Palantir a contract worth nearly £500,000 to use the company’s operating system as part of its professional services function. As part of the pilot, a Palantir AI tool is used to assess officers’ device data.
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Middle East Eye can reveal that London’s police force considers Palantir to be an appropriate supplier because it is used by the British government.
In a meeting of the London Assembly’s Police and Crime committee on Wednesday, Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Matt Jukes said that the police force had gone to the government’s G-Cloud 14 framework, “which lists thousands of suppliers but, for this purpose, relatively few”.
‘Reputationally, we know we are using a divisive supplier in this’
– Matt Jukes, Met Police deputy commissioner
“And we have therefore gone to, for this pilot, a provider that is already widely used across government,” Jukes said, responding to a question from Green Party London Assembly member Benali Hamdache about whether human rights records and “ethical procurement” were factors in the Met’s decision making.
“Reputationally, we know we are using a divisive supplier in this,” Jukes admitted, referring to Palantir.
“I am not here to advocate for Palantir,” he said.
But he made it clear that the use of the controversial US company’s technology by “72 NHS trusts” and its presence on government frameworks meant that Palantir was an appropriate supplier for the Met.
Oversight on Met Police deals
Before he blocked the £50m Palantir deal, Khan had already said he had “concerns about using public money to support firms who act contrary to London’s values”.
Any Met investment above £500,000 must be signed off by Mopac, the mayor’s office for police and crime, under rules designed to ensure compliance with legislation and provide independent oversight.
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Asked by Hamdache if the Met had been given a discount by Palantir on its pilot contracts – the company has previously been accused of doing this in order to avoid scrutiny and oversight – Jukes said, “we can be very clear about the costs of the pilot”.
The initial pilot deal was, he said, “just short of £10,000”, while the latest contract, which has been extended for three months, was “just short of £490,000”. Together these figures come in at just under £500,000, the threshold for scrutiny.
Speaking about his decision to block the £50m Palantir deal, Khan told Mayor’s Question Time on Thursday that Mopac had been asked to formally approve the procurement but had, in the process, identified a “number of serious concerns”.
“The Met did not present their procurement strategy to the deputy mayor for policing and crime for approval as required under Mopac scheme of delegation,” Khan said. “Instead, the Met Police Service procurement process proceeded to the point of requesting Mopac approval for contract award.”
Khan’s office said London’s police force risked becoming locked into Palantir’s technology, adding that the proposed deal had not “ensured or demonstrated value for money”.
As a result of that, the London mayor said, a decision not to approve the Met proceeding with the contract award to Palantir was taken.
Palantir ‘used by Israeli military as it commits genocide’
Responding to Khan’s decision, Kristyan Benedict, Amnesty International’s UK campaigns manager, said: “This is positive news. Palantir is a US software company whose tools are currently used by the Israeli military as they commit genocide against Palestinians in occupied Gaza.”
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) said the mayor had made the decision following its campaigning. “Palantir supplies Israel with AI and surveillance technology used in its genocide in Gaza. It should not receive a penny of public money,” PSC said.
“Alongside blocking this contract, the mayor must now intervene to cancel the existing £500,000 Met Police contract to use Palantir technology in the force’s ‘professional service function,'” the campaign group said.
‘It’s good that this £50 million contract was blocked, but the Met still has contracts with Palantir worth nearly £500,000 that haven’t been challenged’
– Benali Hamdache, Green Party
Hamdache, the Green Party assembly member who questioned Khan about the deal on Thursday, welcomed the cancellation but also highlighted the already existing pilot scheme between Palantir and the Met.
In a statement, Hamdache told MEE that serious loopholes in procurement risk allowing similar deals to happen in the future.
At the end of April, the Metropolitan Police Federation (MPF), the Met’s union, criticised the use of the Palantir AI tool to assess officers’ device data. The MPF warned colleagues to be “extremely cautious about carrying Metropolitan Police-issued devices when off duty”.
“This use of AI will seriously damage the trust Metropolitan Police officers have in the force and ride a coach and horses through already plummeting morale,” the union said.
“The public backlash has been impossible to ignore and the mayor now appears to be distancing himself from Labour’s cosy relationship with Palantir and finally listening to the anger and concern felt across London,” Hamdache said.
The Green politician pointed to the use of Palantir technology “as part of Israel’s genocide in Gaza”, by ICE in the United States and a recent company manifesto published online, which was replete with far-right rhetoric.
“It’s good that this £50 million contract was blocked, but the Met still has contracts with Palantir worth nearly £500,000 that haven’t been challenged,” Hamdache said.
Palantir and the British state
The decision comes at a time of growing resistance to Palantir’s involvement with the British state.
The US company, co-founded by Donald Trump supporter Peter Thiel, has contracts with the UK’s Ministry of Defence, National Health Service, police forces and other government bodies that are worth close to $1bn.
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“The British government must act to cancel all contracts with Palantir, including NHS England’s £330m contract to develop and maintain the Federated Data Platform to store patient medical data, which is opposed by health workers, patients and human rights groups,” PSC said.
“The close relationship between the British government and Palantir is abhorrent.”
Palantir is implicated in Israeli military atrocities and the genocide in Gaza. In January 2024, the company signed a deal with the Israeli defence ministry to provide services for “war-related missions” with the genocide in Gaza already underway.
At the time, the company’s CEO, Alex Karp, said that Palantir’s services were in great demand following the Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023. Palantir held a board meeting in Tel Aviv “in solidarity” with Israel.
In April, Palantir shared a manifesto, largely adapted from a book by Karp, that denounced “regressive” cultures and espoused other far-right principles
The manifesto defended far-right billionaire Elon Musk’s “grand narrative” vision of the world and criticised attempts to hound wealthy figures out of public life by scrutinising their behaviour.
