Sadiq Khan has blocked a £50m Metropolitan police deal with the controversial US tech company Palantir, sparking a bitter row between the London mayor and Scotland Yard.
After the UK’s largest police force had agreed to use Palantir’s AI technology to automate intelligence analysis in criminal investigations, Khan intervened, citing “serious concerns” about how the deal had been struck.
The mayor’s office said there had been a “clear and serious breach” of procurement rules and said police had only seriously considered one supplier (Palantir).
The deal would have been Palantir’s largest yet in British policing, after others worth £330m and £240m with NHS England and the Ministry of Defence.
For now, this decision prevents us using technology already available to the MoD, the NHS and other police forces.”.
City Hall said this did not allow bids from suppliers other than the one that was selected by the Met based on their desktop assessment (Palantir).
In January, the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, called for police to “ramp up use of AI” and to adopt the technology “at pace and scale”. »