Inside the Met Police’s £750 Million Tech Force and Its Battle to Use AI
A battle within the heart of London crime is brewing. But it’s not between gangs; it’s the Mayor and the Metropolitan Police butting heads. An ever-tech-savvy Scotland Yard has made a £50 million deal with AI company Palantir to speed up criminal investigations. If a contract isn’t inked, the Met has warned it will have to cut officer numbers. But human rights campaigners and AI ethics experts have questioned why an American tech company is burrowing deep into British public life. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan agreed. His office blocked the Met deal last week over ‘serious concerns’ about how it had been struck. Now Metro can exclusively reveal how much money the Met has spent on its IT – and what this means for deals with companies like Palantir.
What is Palantir?
Palantir is a data analysis and technology firm and military contractor co-founded by Donald Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel. The company vacuums up huge amounts of data collected by governments and corporations to identify patterns or people. Such data could include home addresses, phone numbers, immigration history, health information or social media activity. Palantir bosses say that the company makes the tools, not the rules. One Palantir customer is the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which uses programmes to track down asylum seekers.
Israel has also been using Palantir software tools since 2014, most recently to carry out attacks in Gaza and Lebanon. Amnesty International has also waded in on the debate. They told Metro they are calling on public institutions to divest from Palantir because of their involvement with the Israeli military. Kristyan Benedict, Amnesty International UK’s Crisis Response Manager, said: ‘Palantir has been supplying AI products and services to the Israeli military and intelligence services that contribute to Israel’s ongoing genocide, apartheid, and illegal occupation in Gaza. Due to Palantir’s contribution to human rights violations, it should have no place in our public institutions – not in our NHS, not in the Ministry of Defence, and not in British policing.’
Palantir is already in the UK – it has a £330 million deal with NHS England to run the Federated Data Platform, a sprawling health database. The firm also struck a £240 million deal with the Ministry of Defence in January, analysing the data needed in ‘live operational decision making’. Alex Karp, the company’s billionaire CEO, published a mini-manifesto last month, which an MP described as ‘the ramblings of a supervillain’. The 1,000-word document criticised inclusivity, said there should be a universal national service and that AI weapons should be embraced.
Why Does the Mayor of London Want to Block the Met from Using Palantir?
City Hall told Metro that it’s two things – budget constraints and ethics. Any Met investment above £500,000 must be signed off by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) under procurement law, which is designed to keep deals legally sound. ‘The Met only engaged with one potential supplier, Palantir,’ a Mayor of London spokesperson said. ‘It also did not present their procurement strategy to the Deputy Mayor for approval as required. The process followed by the [Met] for the award of the contract has not adequately ensured, or demonstrated, value for money.’ MOPAC also cited concerns around Palantir’s values and ethics, though legally, this cannot sway a deal.
How Much Do the Police Spend on IT?
Over the last three years, the force has spent £744 million into their IT systems, Metro can exclusively reveal. From March 2025 to February 2026, the Met Police coughed up £258 million into IT staff and spending, down from £261 million in the previous year, but higher than the £225 million between 2023-2024. Over the same period, the number of IT staff increased from 133 to 145, with total salary expenditure rising from £14.1 million to £17 million. The firm’s UK chief executive, Louis Mosley, said Khan is ‘putting politics over public safety’. But Martha Dark, the co-executive director of the tech equity group Foxglove, says that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Dark says that Palantir has a ‘land and expand’ approach to securing contracts with the institutions built to protect the people. ‘Palantir is an explicitly political company,’ Dark says. ‘Its track record is supporting ICE to run workplace deportation raids and seize family members of unaccompanied children, as well as supporting racist so-called “predictive policing” by American police forces. If Mr Mosley wants an example of putting politics over people’s safety, perhaps he should look close to home.’
Why Do Police Want to Use Palantir?
Palantir tools have already helped the Met analyse internal data systems and uncover misconduct. Three officers have been arrested on suspicion of fraud, sexual assault and the abuse of authority thanks to it. Some 98 officers are being investigated for allegedly tampering with police rotas for personal or financial gain, with a further 500 issued warnings. Stuart Harvey, CEO of data management firm Datactics, told Metro that police forces are using AI to stay on top of data and governance. ‘Without a strong foundation, critical evidence could be missed or delayed, which makes IT infrastructure not just about efficiency, but about accuracy, reliability and ultimately delivering justice faster and stronger,’ he added. ‘AI can add real value in helping investigators review large volumes of digital material and identify patterns that would otherwise be missed.’ The decision by MOPAC to block the Palantir deal was ‘disappointing’, the Met told Metro. ‘We must be able to innovate at a faster rate than hostile states and organised criminals,’ the force added. ‘For now, this decision prevents us using technology already available to the MoD, the NHS and other police forces.’
