US spy tech outfit Palantir directly contacted the minister of state for disabled people, health and work, Tom Pursglove in a bid to get him to buy technology to crack down on benefits fraud.
For those who came in late, Palantir, was founded by PayPal co-founder and Trump supporter Peter Thiel. It wrote to Pursglove in April to brief him on its technology, promising that it could help the Department for Work and Pensions to “recover large amounts of fraud.”
According to emails seen by The Guardian after a Freedom of Information request, Palantir attached a note trying to arrange a meeting with Pursglove or his team “to explore whether this capability could be of benefit here in the UK.”
Palantir’s message suggested the use of its software at another location, which DWP had redacted in the FoI request.
It added, “We recognise that the UK context is complex and unique. Nevertheless we believe there is scope for rapid read-across, potentially enabling DWP to identify and recover large amounts of fraud.”
Palantir is seeking to expand its influence across the UK public sector and has previously talked about its plan to buy its way into the NHS. The health service awarded the company a £25 million contract in a closed tender earlier this year.
David Davis, who has previously raised concerns about Palantir’s involvement in the NHS, agreed that tackling benefit fraud was important but said doing so depended on the approach used.
“One difficulty with this sort of issue is that a primary method of finding a solution involves collating vast amounts of data, spotting trends and then picking out individuals
“Unfortunately, that goes to the greatest concern any British government should have about Palantir – namely its history of security-related data management. So I would want to be very, very sure that there was formidable privacy protections before allowing Palantir in,” he said.
Palantir said views like Davis’ were based on a misunderstanding of its model, and that it does not collect, mine or sell data.
“[The meeting] would have been to discuss how our software could help DWP officials to better organise their information in order to tackle fraud and error in the round – which costs the UK taxpayer billions of pounds a year that could otherwise potentially be spent in areas such as health or education,” a spokesperson said.
They added, “We make no apology for constantly looking for new ways in which our software can help and there is nothing unusual about writing official correspondence to ministers offering ideas for how it could.”
