CAMPAIGNING to cancel US tech firm Palantir’s controversial NHS contract has reached a “key crunch point,” a doctor said at Unison’s conference in Brighton yesterday.

The government is considering cancelling the £330 million contract to build and run the health service’s federated data platform after local campaigns led NHS hospitals decide against adopting its Foundry software that is also used by the Israeli military in Gaza.

Speaking at a fringe meeting on AI, Dr Rhiannon Osborne, of the non-profit organisation Medact, said: “Where we are now after two and half years of organising — the government is officially considering cancelling the contract.

“And that’s as a result of a huge amount of grassroots organising at the hospital level and also with NHS England that have made this contract potentially untenable.”

She hit out at Big Tech companies’ PR “snake oil,” warning they “are not infallible at all.”

“What this campaign has shown through very tried and tested traditional community based organising, this contract is now at the point of cancellation,” she said.

“We are in a really key crunch time now where the government  is considering cancelling the contract which would be in February next year.

“And they will be making that decision within the next six months and if we can make the public and worker pressure against this contract so insurmountable that they are forced to cancel it that sets a precedent for big tech in public services in a huge way that goes beyond this campaign.

“That you cannot force big tech against the wishes of workers into public services, that you cannot award huge contracts to companies that are vocally pro-human rights abuses.”