London Mayor Sadiq Khan has blocked a proposed £50 million Metropolitan Police contract with Palantir that would have used the company's artificial intelligence technology to automate intelligence analysis in criminal investigations. The Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime, which must approve police contracts worth £50 million or more, withheld approval after determining that Scotland Yard had seriously engaged with only one potential supplier.

City Hall blocked the two-year contract because Scotland Yard did not obtain Mopac's approval for its procurement strategy, according to the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime. As a result, it was not possible to determine whether the market had been tested to ensure value for money. Khan's office said the Met risked becoming locked into Palantir's technology and that the proposed deal had not ensured or demonstrated value for money. The Met had originally costed the proposed contract at £15 million to £25 million per year, and the proposed deal was at the top of that range.

In a letter to Met commissioner Mark Rowley, deputy mayor for policing and crime Kaya Comer-Schwartz said she had not been provided with any acceptable explanation for the failure to seek approval and regarded it as a clear and serious breach of the applicable procedural requirements. She said the procurement process had created legal and reputation risks to Scotland Yard and the mayor.

Mopac said it wanted to work with the Met on a new procurement at pace, and there is no block on Palantir bidding for similar future contracts. A spokesperson for Khan said Londoners only wanted to see public money paid to companies that share the city's values, and that the mayor would raise with the government the question of whether ethics should be taken into account in procurement processes. Public procurement rules do not currently allow ethics to be taken into account during procurement processes.

An earlier Met police trial of Palantir's AI to monitor staff behaviour was carried out under a contract awarded directly without advertisement or open competition, and was marginally below the threshold requiring City Hall's approval. Scotland Yard said the trial resulted in hundreds of officers being investigated for misdemeanours such as abusing the computerized roster system, falsely claiming they were in the office, and failing to declare Freemasonry membership.

Palantir holds contracts worth more than £600 million with the NHS, the Ministry of Defence, the Financial Conduct Authority and several smaller police forces, and also serves the Israeli military and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Hundreds of thousands of people have signed petitions calling on ministers to break contracts with the company, including its £330 million deal to help operate a patient and medical data platform for NHS England.