Ditch Palantir's £330m NHS contract, MPs and campaigners tell Burnham

After our investigation revealed ‘clunky’ and ‘slow’ software, internal complaints and a £30,000-a-month lobbying operation, pressure is mounting to trigger Palantir ‘break clause’

MPs, healthcare experts and NHS insiders are calling on Andy Burnham’s new government to end the NHS’s controversial £330m contract with Palantir, after our investigation revealed remarkably low levels of usage of the tech firm’s software in the health service.

Figures released under FOI show that 54 of the 139 NHS trusts that are ‘live’ on the Federated Data Platform (FDP) have not logged in to a suite of apps built by Palantir to tackle clinical problems such as cutting waiting lists and speeding up cancer diagnoses.

Even among the 85 trusts that are active, engagement is minimal. Forty-six trusts who did log in used just one of the eight apps for which NHS England released average annual usage data under FOI.

Trusts in Barnsley, Buckinghamshire, Gateshead, Southport, East Lancashire, the North Midlands and East Suffolk - among others - each had just two users per week over the 12 months to June.

Our investigation, published in the latest edition of the London Review of Books, also revealed how Peter Mandelson’s firm Global Counsel opened doors for Palantir without declaring its client and found that NHS leaders have privately admitted problems with Palantir’s software.

Labour MP Dame Chi Onwurah, chair of the Science and Technology Select Committee, said the government should exercise the break clause that would allow it to end Palantir’s NHS contract next year.

“Palantir is not the only company that can provide the services it provides, as it has suggested. The government should instead look to invest in an in-house alternative or support a UK-based provider, to strengthen the UK’s technological sovereignty and minimise the possibility of vendor lock-in,” Onwurah told us.

Her committee colleague, Liberal Democrat MP Martin Wrigley, said the usage figures we revealed were “shocking” and that he would be pushing NHS England for answers. “I suspect it’s just not very good,” he told us.

Labour MP and former vice chair of the health committee Rachael Maskell went further, saying “it is crucial that Andy Burnham MP, as he starts out as Prime Minister, orders a full investigation into Palantir”.

Co-founded by Donald Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel, Palantir has been heavily criticised for its work on ICE immigration enforcement and with the Israel Defense Forces. The defence and surveillance tech firm now has UK contracts with the Ministry of Defence, police forces and the Financial Conduct Authority.

As we revealed this week, its rapid growth in Britain was aided by Peter Mandelson’s lobbying firm Global Counsel, which Palantir hired - for a monthly retainer of more than £30,000 - to position it as “a respectable partner to the British government”.

Hope Worsdale, spokesperson for the medical campaign group Just Treatment, said: “Democracy for Sale’s reporting confirms the open secret - Palantir are not an exceptional tech company, they are exceptional lobbyists and self-promoters.”

Green Party spokesperson Ellie Chowns MP said our investigation was “a stark reminder of how dark money, opaque lobbying, and vested interests can distort politics and public procurement in this country”. She called on the government to “pause any further expansion of Palantir’s role in the NHS” and “conduct a transparent review of alternative providers”.

Within the health service, there is growing disquiet about the quality of Palantir’s software. As we reported yesterday, the Cancer360 tool - built by Palantir to speed up cancer diagnoses and hailed by then prime minister Keir Starmer as “groundbreaking” - was used by only six NHS trusts in its first nine months. One clinician told us it is not much more than a “glorified spreadsheet”.

Internally, the NHS admits that Palantir’s “slow and clunky” software is hard to use even for trained professionals, and ten times slower at analysing data than the system currently in use. (Palantir told us that it is not possible to make a like-for-like comparison because the FDP has extra security measures.)

NHS Analysts Together, a group of data experts who work inside the health service, called on the government to stop working with Palantir: “Alternatives already exist for a lot of FDP functionality, and we are ready to build the rest. We back the break clause.”

A spokesperson for NHS England said: “NHS staff and patients across England are seeing the benefits of the NHS Federated Data Platform every day, from reducing unnecessary days in hospital to boosting operating theatre capacity – while saving money for NHS teams and taxpayers.”

Palantir’s head of UK corporate affairs, Ben Mascall, told us that: “Palantir software has helped to deliver 110,000 additional operations to date, a 15 per cent reduction in discharge delays and a 6.8 per cent increase in patients finding out whether they need cancer treatment within 28 days.”

The NHS is currently facing an investigation by the statistics watchdog over claims it has made about the positive impact of Palantir’s software.

Democracy for Sale is dedicated to uncovering dark money and hidden influence in our politics and fighting against secrecy.

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