Hello again! It’s been a busy few months since our last Bulletin, and with so much noise in the news we wanted to send an update.
What just happened – Streeting is gone
Mr Streeting, protégé of Peter Mandelson, admirer of Palantir, is now the former Secretary of State for Health. Yay! That doesn’t mean tomorrow will necessarily be better, but it does mean that patient views – and rational, coherent argument underpinned by evidence – stand a better chance of affecting decision making, rather than the main factor being the effect on a bid to get into Number 10.
You may have seen that UK Biobank has been in the news several times over the last few months. They made a series of promises to their members, and to the NHS, and then failed to keep them. They also loudly advocated for the “pandemic only” GP dataset to be used for anything the Secretary of State decides he wants to do with the data. Mr Streeting decided he liked that idea, and in February he tore up the pandemic-only promise.
Mr Streeting’s last act in office was to lay his Health Bill in Parliament. The Bill proposes that you must have his Single Patient Record in Palantir (aka Single Palantir Record) and that politicians will decide how it is then used – any protections you and your data receive being in the gift of the politicians of the day.
Hmm. How’d that go for the pandemic dataset?
Current chatter in the corridors of Government suggests you’ll have fewer choices about how your and your family’s medical information is used than you’ve had for the Summary Care Record for the last two decades.
What’s next – more talk, not change
Your opt out works today as it always has, but Mr Streeting has announced it will be less effective after his Bill comes into effect.
That won’t happen immediately, so you still have time to act – but Mr Streeting wants it to be this year. (And he’s quit to have a run at PM, so who knows what will happen…)
www.medConfidential.org/how-to-opt-out
Labour may speedrun the lessons of the 2006-2010 Summary Care Record roll out, where you finally got a choice – either at GP registration time, or later. NHSE has worked for over a decade to walk this back, just in time for a previous Labour health secretary to reappear on the national scene. Hello again Andy, my old chum!
What you can do
Nothing has changed yet. Your choices are still there today, but the new Secretary of State may follow through on the threats of his predecessor and take away your ability to opt out in future. Before that, a day may come when the opt out will do less than it does today.
Politicians may also make you opt out again, because they dislike that you did so already.
The rules and standards around access to the Single Patient Palantir Record, as with the Federated Data Platform on which it’ll be built, will be whatever the Secretary of State wants.
You may wish to write to your MP – the Bill applies UK-wide, not just in England – pointing out that the Health Bill they may vote for will impose a Single Palantir Record on every single one of their constituents, whether they want one or not. (You may also wish to point out that while most people are currently unaware of that fact, MPs cannot rely on no-one finding out.)
We’ll be here.
Phil Booth & Sam Smith
22nd May 2026
coordinator@medConfidential.org
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