Starmer’s Big Tech lobbying problem

Palantir is not just selling software—it’s selling a model of governance where corporate power replaces public control, writes Foxglove's Rosa Curling.

By Rosa Curling

Britain has a problem: our government is being steered by Big Tech lobbying and influence— and we need to act before it’s too late.

The most recent example came this week, when ministers instructed the competition regulator—whose statutory duty is to promote competitive markets and shield the public from unfair practices—to throw its weight behind the government’s new AI Opportunities Action Plan.

Downing Street’s “strategic steer” to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) chimes with Keir Starmer’s grand wager: if you ease off the tech titans—Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Google—the wider economy will miraculously flourish.

That vision explains why the previous CMA chair was pushed out and replaced by the former head of Amazon UK, while the head of Microsoft UK now chairs the Government’s Industrial Strategy Council. And the “AI Opportunities Action Plan” the CMA is expected to endorse? It was drafted by Matt Clifford, a venture capitalist with millions invested in tech outfits.

Yet there is a glaring flaw in the Prime Minister’s faith in Big Tech: the available evidence tells a very different—and far darker—story.

This week, Democracy for Sale revealed that Palantir—a US spy-tech firm the government has trusted with millions of people’s sensitive health records—has sold us software that many hospitals say is simply not fit for purpose.

Palantir reached this point through a dogged lobbying and influence campaign.

Peter Thiel’s company—which is also assisting Donald Trump’s unlawful deportation programme—started courting senior UK health officials and other key government figures as far back as 2019. The pandemic then handed Palantir its opening: the firm offered its “Foundry” platform to the NHS to run a vast new datastore, priced at a nominal £1.

There was no competitive tender; the contract was handed to Palantir outright. Unsurprisingly, the price shot up at the first renewal—from a token pound to £330 million—for the Federated Data Platform. By then, Palantir’s beachhead in the NHS, and the wider UK public sector, was secure, giving it a formidable lead over any rival.

And the story gets worse. Palantir appears unwilling to settle for this lucrative medical data trove alone. Earlier this year, its UK chief, Louis Mosely—treating his appearance at the Covid Inquiry as marketing gold—proposed that Palantir should run a “common operating system” for all government data. He clearly internalised his company’s slogan: “We build to dominate.”

A closer look offers clues to how Palantir intends to realise that ambition. It will operate from the top down, leveraging an already-successful lobbying record and its cosy ties with power-brokers such as Peter Mandelson, who arranged the Prime Minister’s recent pilgrimage to Palantir’s Washington HQ.

Simultaneously, it will work from the bottom up. Even the scant public information about Palantir’s contracts shows the company making a long march through UK institutions at every tier: police forces, local councils, the Ministry of Defence, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and National Highways have all joined the NHS in Palantir’s ever-growing orbit.

Here at Foxglove, we have tried to raise the alarm for years. Back in 2023, we revealed that NHS professionals had been warning of critical failures during Foundry trials. Problems were glossed over, several pilots were suspended, yet—amid a culture of secrecy—the contract was nevertheless signed.

So why should we care? At first glance, this is merely a controversial software firm supplying services. When—or if—the government comes to its senses, it could simply sever ties and free us from Palantir’s grip.

Sadly, it is not that straightforward. A single, centralised NHS data platform run by Palantir risks locking the health service into a monopoly provider. US police departments already using Palantir’s tools report that “once you sign on with Palantir, it can be hard to sign off.”

Palantir’s ascent in Britain forms part of a wider concentration of governmental access in the hands of a tiny clique of tech giants. This week, technology secretary Peter Kyle was criticised after revelations that his department has held dozens of meetings with Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta and others since Labour took office. Tellingly, the criticism came from within the tech community itself: smaller UK firms are alarmed by the government’s proximity to “a handful of global players.”

But the issue is bigger than Kyle. The “strategic steer” delivered to the supposedly independent CMA last week came from the Business Secretary and the Chancellor—and dovetails with recent statements by the Prime Minister.

Anyone familiar with Big Tech’s playbook knows that weakening the competition watchdog will not spur growth. On the contrary, it will allow Silicon Valley behemoths to grow even larger, tighter-knit, and harder for the state to rein in—undermining British businesses in the process. Consumers, emerging UK companies, workers’ protections, and our democratic freedoms will all suffer, as is starkly evident on the other side of the Atlantic.

We are witnessing, in real time, a government whose relationship with tech giants is far too cosy and far too uncritical. Ministers seem content to accept at face value the glossy marketing promises of Palantir, Microsoft, Amazon and Google—apparently uninterested in subjecting those claims to rigorous scrutiny.

The UK is now trapped in a pincer movement: on one flank, tech-giant lobbying seeks to erode the state’s capacity to regulate; on the other, these same corporations are inching ever deeper into essential public services. Unless this Big Tech influence machine is confronted—and soon—the damage may become irreversible.

Rosa Curling is a public lawyer and co-executive director at Foxglove.