Labour Blocks Conference Vote on Cancelling Palantir's £330m NHS Contract Amid Israeli Military Links

The motion never reached the conference floor.

At Labour's annual conference in Liverpool this week, the Socialist Health Association and at least three constituency Labour parties submitted an emergency motion calling on the government to cancel Palantir's £330m NHS data contract. The Conference Arrangements Committee blocked it, ruling it did not meet the criteria for debate.

The motion had argued that Palantir was "facing numerous allegations of involvement in serious breaches of human rights, including due to it developing technology for Israel's military to use in its unlawful occupation of Palestinian land and genocide in Gaza."

"The Labour government has a responsibility to uphold public trust in politics, including in the awarding of public contracts, particularly where there are allegations of involvement in grave violations of international law."

Jon Byrne, a councillor from the Hazel Grove constituency party, one of the motion's backers, pressed the CAC in the conference hall Monday morning. He said the CAC had authority to reject the motion but asked for a full explanation. The committee said it would respond by email to the parties that submitted it.

The Palantir record

Palantir has won more than £670m in UK civil and defence contracts since 2020, according to reporting reviewed for this article. In January 2024 the company announced a partnership with Israel's Ministry of Defence to support what it called "war-related missions," including drone-fired missile strikes in Gaza that have killed journalists and aid workers.

A July 2025 report by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese found reasonable grounds to believe Palantir supplied "automatic predictive policing technology, core defence infrastructure for rapid and scaled-up construction and deployment of military software," and an AI platform enabling "real-time battlefield data integration for automated decision-making."

Asked in April 2025 about Palestinian deaths tied to Palantir's systems, chief executive Alex Karp said the dead were "mostly terrorists, that's true."

The same morning

The CAC's decision landed hours after Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told conference delegates that Palestine protesters "were right," and that the government would "match words with actions," citing new sanctions on Israeli settlers and a ban on arms exports that materially contribute to the occupation.

Dan Iley-Williamson, political organiser at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, called the blocked motion a contradiction of that pledge. "It is deeply disappointing that Labour blocked this emergency motion," he told Middle East Eye, "demonstrating that while the foreign secretary today said protesters for Palestine 'were right,' the government is still refusing to match that with action."

The £330m NHS contract with Palantir remains in force.