Sadiq Khan blocks £50M Met Police Palantir deal over breach
- Source
- The Guardian
- Time
- 4:19 PM
- Weight
- 94/100
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has blocked a proposed £50 million contract between the Metropolitan Police and the US data analytics company Palantir. The deal was intended to provide artificial intelligence technology to automate intelligence analysis for criminal investigations.
However, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (Mopac) intervened, citing a "clear and serious breach" of procurement procedures. Officials stated that Scotland Yard had failed to properly test the market by engaging almost exclusively with a single supplier, raising concerns about value for money and the risk of becoming locked into a specific vendor's technology.