Palantir and London policing authority end £50 million procurement litigation

On October 14, The Guardian reported that Palantir and the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime withdrew their allegations over a proposed two-year, £50 million Metropolitan Police technology contract, avoiding a High Court trial scheduled for January. The parties made no admissions, paid no damages and will bear their own costs; a new procurement is under way, and the authority agreed to treat Palantir fairly and equally if it bids without committing to appoint it. For law firms and clients, the settlement does not resolve the underlying tension between formally neutral procurement tests and political concern about a vendor’s government, military and immigration work across jurisdictions. Public-sector technology providers should document how security, data access, ethics, value-for-money and statutory procurement criteria are separated in decision records, because reputational objections can still generate bid challenges even when they are not the stated legal basis.