Nine reasons why the NHS should ditch Palantir

Is Palantir the most toxic company in the world right now? So far this year, it’s been a central plank of the brutal ICE removals of alleged illegal immigrants in the US. Its software was used to bomb a girls’ school in Iran, killing 168 children. Its CEO, Alex Karp, published a “technofascist manifesto” from the company’s X account that accused “some cultures” of being “regressive”.

And through it all, it continued to build the NHS’s Federated Data Platform (FDP), handling the entire nation’s sensitive health data. It’s a £330m contract and it’s now up for renewal. There’s no doubt that Palantir has been twitchily watching as public antipathy has grown. Campaigners, MPs and news outlets – including the Nerve – have raised questions the company has largely refused to answer. Most saliently of all: is it even fit for purpose? 

A body of experts say not. And, the killer point: not one but two parliamentary committees have conducted thorough inquiries which resulted in headlines advising the NHS to ditch it. 

Palantir has fought back. Louis Mosley, the UK CEO, has attempted to tweet his way through it and, in September, the company splashed out on an expensive new hire: the former deputy leader of the Labour party, the Baron of Wyre Forest otherwise known as Tom Watson. 

A consummate political insider who knows the entire Labour leadership and, according to one MP, knows where the bodies are buried, he’s been working his contacts. But behind the scenes, campaigners were confident that – as the deadline on a break clause in February 2027 loomed – the Burnham government would have to reconsider the contract.

Would Burnham really waste his political capital on a widely reviled firm whose Trump-loving co-founder, Peter Thiel, has vocally announced that he believes in neither democracy nor the NHS? 

Well, last week, the Financial Times and the Times reported that “people familiar with the matter” have said the NHS will renew, extending the contract for another two years. The reason? Because it would be too “disruptive” to extricate it from the NHS and more time would be needed – exactly the point that campaigners have been making about dependency. 

We asked investigative reporters Amaar Chowdhury and Max Colbert, who have been reporting on the company for the Nerve for the past year, to explain exactly what the problems are. Here’s their guide to the nine reasons Palantir should be kicked out of the NHS.

In the corporate world this is known as “vendor lock-in”. High switching costs mean leaving a contract feels expensive and risky, which makes it more likely that the deal will continue. 

Palantir’s relationship with the NHS fits this pattern. Its first work with the NHS came during the pandemic, after it was awarded a £1 emergency contract without competition for its Foundry data platform that would later turn into the healthcare service’s largest ever contract at £330m. The Labour MP for York Central, Rachael Maskell, said in the Commons that this represented a pattern, also citing a Ministry of Defence (MoD) contract that “tripled in size to £240m without due process or competition”. 

Concerns over vendor lock-in were reiterated this month in the FT’s report that Palantir’s contract was to be maintained, which said that “[a ministerial review] has concluded that it is not practical to replace Palantir’s software within the next four months”. 

Healthcare IT analyst Jon Hoeksma, CEO of Future Health Intelligence and former editor of Digital Health, told the Nerve: “It will likely take a significant amount of work, beginning now, to extricate the NHS FDP from Palantir.”

Dame Chi Onwurah, chair of the Commons science and technology committee, told the Nerve: "If, as reported, the government requires another two years to extricate itself from this contract, that shows a degree of vendor lock-in which raises grave doubts about the government's ability to deliver competitive, value-for-money digital services.”

Reporting by Democracy for Sale reveals that Palantir’s FDP is significantly slower at analysing data than the existing tools. “Processing time is reported as taking 4-5 minutes compared to 30 seconds [in the current system]”, according to NHS England briefings obtained by reporters. These internal documents reportedly label the platform as “slow and clunky” with a “poor user experience”.

Likewise, in response to a series of freedom of information requests filed by health campaigning group Medact, several other trusts have asserted that the system offers no clear benefits over existing technology. NHS Dorset integrated care board, for example, said that there was “no operational value or benefit” over existing tools when explaining why it had not adopted the FDP. 

Palantir’s position is that the trusts and boards that have rejected the FDP are a fringe group. The firm’s senior vice-president and social media spokesperson, former Labour minister Tom Watson, cited NHS England figures suggesting that “137 [trusts] are already reporting benefits” from using the platform.

However, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) has stated that these performance figures cannot be used to “draw conclusions about cause and effect, as other variables have not been controlled for.” Their investigation concluded that statistical teams at NHS England did not clear that data for public use before it was published. This week the Guardian revealed the list of 137 “benefiting” trusts had been removed from NHS England’s website. 

In July, the body stated that, going forward, “any figures cited by ministers… [should be]  communicated in a clear, accurate manner”. NHS England CEO Jim Mackey now plans to have Palantir clear their statements with his team, though even he admits that this could be difficult to enforce legally.

Watson’s response to the OSR acknowledged that the company has yet to publish a controlled study about the FDP’s benefits. “It’s fair enough”, he said: “Hospitals using our software are reporting better results. But hospitals are complicated places and there might be other things affecting those results. So the regulator is right to urge caution.”

A commonly deployed defence of Palantir’s FDP is that there are no suitable or sovereign alternatives. “No UK-based platform exists at this scale or capability today”, Palantir UK CEO Louis Mosley claimed in his defence of the firm in the Telegraph in June this year.

But these bold claims are not necessarily backed up with evidence. NHS Greater Manchester integrated care board, for example, has stated that its in-house Analytics and Data Science Platform (ADSP) “exceeds anything the FDP currently offers”, albeit “in a care board setting, not across the NHS” as with the FDP.

According to Hoeksma, suitable competitive platforms include Quantexa, Snowflake, and Emrys Health’s Afon.

Onwurah says: “The government needs to act urgently to build and procure credible domestic alternatives, increase competition and reduce this dependency, to ensure the UK has control and sovereignty over the technology underpinning one of our most important public services."

In July, the health and social care committee urged the government to cut its ties to Palantir, citing concerns over data security, doubts about the FDP’s efficacy, and the availability of alternative solutions. The committee recommended that the break clause be activated not only because of the “serious mistrust” of Palantir’s product, but also because of the contested and overstated claims of its benefits. Lib Dem MP Layla Moran, chair of the committee, said on its behalf that the government’s arguments for maintaining the FDP had “unravelled”. 

Commenting to the Nerve about the recent reports that Palantir’s contract would be maintained, Moran said: "The government must be transparent and publish evidence on which it based this decision, so that we can judge whether sufficient consideration was given to the concerns we raised about the FDP’s usage and effectiveness, and the impact on public trust.”

Responding to the committee's concerns to reporters, a Palantir spokesperson said: “Palantir software is helping to deliver better patient care, including 110,000 additional operations to date, a 15% reduction in discharge delays and a 6.8% increase in patients finding out whether they need cancer treatment within 28 days.” 

In addition, the science, innovation, and technology committee warned in June that Palantir’s role in healthcare presented an "unacceptable point of weakness”.

Onwurah, chair of the committee, told the Nerve: “My committee has repeatedly called for the 2027 break clause in Palantir's Federated Data Platform contract with the NHS to be exercised. The NHS should not be so reliant on a single US-based supplier for its digital infrastructure.”

Palantir maintains that it was appointed "in line with public contract regulations" and that the NHS retains full control of the data.

Bloomberg reported that Watson wrote to his New Labour-era ministerial colleague Yvette Cooper, now the health secretary, urging her to keep the FDP and arguing that Palantir “helps build Britain’s sovereign technological capability”. The decision to extend will be made by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), headed by Cooper, to whom Watson extended his “warmest wishes”. 

As previously revealed by the Nerve, Palantir recruited 32 UK government and public sector officials, from the NHS, MoD and other departments – including at least five senior figures from the NHS – while securing lucrative government contracts. The practice was considered part of a “revolving door”, posing an “acute risk” of corruption, according to transparency experts. When these claims were put to them, Palantir said: “We entirely reject claims of an alleged ‘revolving door’ strategy”. 

Recently the Guardian revealed that Palantir had lobbied ministers to add NHS GP records to the FDP. WhatsApp messages between former health minister Zubir Ahmed and Louis Mosley demonstrate Palantir encouraging the minister to “get out ahead of” the “political” opposition, despite the firm telling reporters that it has “always been clear that it is for the government to decide how they roll the software out”. This week the Bureau of Investigative Journalism  reported that Cressida Dick, former head of the Metropolitan police, has been a paid Palantir advisor since September 2025.

Last year, Dr Marc Farr, chair of the Chief Data and Analytical Officer Network (CDAON), warned healthcare chiefs that “adoption costs often outweigh the costs of technology itself”, continuing that cost benefits for the FDP need “to be made very clear before [the NHS] can commit – especially with many systems under significant financial stress”.

In the most recent financial year, figures published by the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (Nista) reveal that the true cost of the FDP is closer to £1.1bn, reflecting “increased delivery at scale”, and that forecast benefits have fallen from £2.5bn to £808m. 

Farr’s letter to the NHS also lays bare the significant existing investments that NHS England has made regarding patient data. “Transitioning to FDP raises concerns about potential disruptions and the risk of losing existing functionality and value,” according to the CDAON chief.

Palantir’s early funding was delivered through In-Q-Tel, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) venture capital arm. Since then, it has picked up controversial work in national security and defence for clients in the US, UK, Europe and Israel.

One such tool for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), ImmigrationOS, is used to fast-track the deportation of undocumented migrants. Amnesty International found this enables “constant monitoring, surveillance and assessments” of people using social media intelligence, including students protesting against Israel’s military operations in Gaza.

Palantir has admitted that the company works with the Israeli military, providing services for “war-related missions”. When confronted by a protester at an event in the US, Palantir CEO Alex Karp was told the firm's technology kills Palestinians. He replied: “Mostly terrorists, that’s true.” 

The US air force has also contracted Palantir for its airstrike targeting platform, Project Maven. It was used earlier this year to mistakenly target a girls’ school in Minab, Iran. Over 120 children were killed by the US military in the strike. The US Department of Defense acknowledged that the military’s over-reliance on the AI targeting system had played a part in this tragedy.

Palantir has said that it “is not responsible for the underlying data nor identifying intelligence deficiencies” in this instance. Although the firm may not be directly responsible for the airstrike, questions must be asked as to why it has allowed its software to be used as part of an automated kill-chain with little human oversight. 

It’s interesting that Mosley has criticised campaigners and doctors for supposedly choosing “ideology over patient interest” regarding its NHS deal. Shortly after the conflict in Gaza began, the firm took out a full-page advert in the New York Times stating that “Palantir stands with Israel”, itself an overtly ideological position and an unprecedented move for a military contractor. 

Palantir has previously defended its position on work with immigration enforcement, saying that it has worked with ICE under both the Democrat and Republican administrations. 

Palantir’s co-founder Peter Thiel has been an outspoken critic of the NHS. Speaking at the Oxford Union in 2023, he likened the British public’s affection for the health service as a case of “Stockholm syndrome”.

Speaking in no uncertain terms, Thiel said at the event: “Highways create traffic jams, welfare creates poverty, schools make people dumb and the NHS makes people sick”. He has called for the health service to be ripped up from the ground to “start over”. 

Palantir has tried to distance itself from those comments, and has taken the position that Thiel was making them as a “private individual”, while Mosley defended the difference between the opinions of one man (albeit the co-founder and chair of the board) from the “corporate mandate that Palantir has” to provide a service.

Palantir recently brought a lawsuit against Swiss outlet Republik, after journalists working with the publication revealed that the company had been rejected by the country’s government. Speaking at the time, the journalists suggested that the aggressive response was because it was “the first time [anyone] has published a story about Palantir that has a failure narrative”. Palantir ultimately failed in its retaliatory bid, losing on 22 of the 23 points it brought against the outlet. 

Similarly, in the UK, Palantir brought a lawsuit against the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (Mopac) in London, after it cancelled the direct award to the company of a £50m contract with the Metropolitan police. The company objected to Mopac taking Palantir’s “values and ethics” into account. Ultimately, both parties settled and paid their own costs in the case, with Palantir free to bid in a future tender process. 

The company hasn’t just weaponised legal mechanisms. In a 2023 scandal, it was revealed via leaked emails that Palantir, working alongside Conservative party-linked PR firm Topham Guerin, had engaged in a clandestine initiative to undermine the work of campaign group Good Law Project (GLP), which had launched action against the FDP deal.

They hired a marketing firm to pay influencers to discredit the organisation, telling those that accepted the offer to “keep the brand confidential and not mention Palantir”. The plot, however, unravelled when the marketing firm contacted a co-signatory of the “No Palantir in the NHS” campaign. Details of Palantir’s smear campaign were then disclosed to GLP, which published them in full. The company declined to comment on its actions. 

More recently, as reported by the Nerve, Watson sent a letter to MP Clive Lewis, who has criticised the company, warning him against continuing and outlining the depth of information it had on his activities, in what Lewis described at a fringe event at Labour conference as an “implicit threat”. 

Other MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn, Rachael Maskell and Shockat Adam, have received similar letters. Corybn believes these letters were sent “to intimidate its critics into silence”, while Maskell believes there “there is a reason as to why Palantir has paid close attention to the scrutiny”.

With regard to the letters, the company responded: “There are a great deal of incorrect claims about Palantir circulating online. When politicians – sometimes inadvertently – amplify these falsehoods, they risk misleading the public. The purpose of these letters was to set the record straight. If politicians continue to repeat false claims, we will continue to correct them.”

When contacted by the Nerve, the Department of Health and Social Care did not respond to a request for comment, neither confirming or denying the government’s plans regarding keeping Palantir’s system for another two years, or giving details of any search for a "sovereign" alternative.

Palantir did not respond to a request for comment.