Government ministers are actively exploring whether to trigger a break clause in Palantir’s £330 million NHS contract, as concerns mount over the controversial US data analytics firm’s political connections, its work for Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement operation, and the broader implications of embedding American technology deep within Britain’s most sensitive health infrastructure.
The Financial Times reported at the weekend that ministers had sought advice on activating a review clause in Palantir’s deal to deliver the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP) – an AI-enabled system designed to connect patient health information across NHS trusts and integrated care boards. Government officials have reportedly argued that it would be feasible to transfer the running of the platform to an alternative provider once the break clause becomes active next year.
The reports have triggered a swift and pointed response from Palantir itself, which is pushing back hard against what it characterises as ideologically driven opposition.
What is the Federated Data Platform?
The FDP is one of the most significant technology projects in the NHS’s recent history. It is designed to break down the longstanding problem of siloed health data – where patient information held by one trust or system cannot easily be accessed or shared with another, leading to inefficiencies, delays in diagnosis, and gaps in care.
Palantir, a US data analytics company founded by the influential right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, won the contract to build and deliver the platform. Its technology is now being used across a growing number of NHS organisations – though adoption has been slower than planned. The number of NHS organisations using Palantir technology has increased from 118 to 151 since June, still well short of the target of 240 by the end of this year.
Beyond the NHS, Palantir also holds contracts with the Ministry of Defence, several UK police forces, and the Financial Conduct Authority. Investigative reporting by Byline Times has suggested the firm holds more than £670 million in UK government contracts in total across these various departments, spanning systems involved in nuclear weapons, military operations, and police intelligence databases.
Why are ministers having second thoughts?
Opposition to Palantir’s NHS involvement is not new. The British Medical Association, which represents NHS doctors, has long stated its opposition to the firm’s involvement in healthcare delivery and the use of patient data. Campaign groups have protested against the contract since it was awarded. Pro-Palestine NHS workers staged demonstrations in 2024 over Palantir’s simultaneous work for the Israeli and US militaries.
What appears to have changed is the breadth of the concern. Sources familiar with the situation have told the Guardian that the issue of Palantir and its reputational risk has moved beyond what was previously the Labour left and the Greens. There is a growing recognition within government that the political weather around US technology companies – particularly those with direct links to Donald Trump’s administration – has shifted significantly since the contract was first agreed.
Palantir is not merely adjacent to Trump-era politics. The firm has a contract with ICE – the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency – to support its mass deportation operations. That connection, in the context of Trump’s second-term immigration agenda, has become politically toxic in a way that would have been difficult to predict when the NHS deal was signed.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting acknowledged the ethical difficulty in comments to the Guardian Politics Weekly podcast, saying plainly that if Thiel and Palantir’s senior leadership were placed on the UK political spectrum, they would sit “well off to the right of even Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative party.” He added that the situation was “one of the challenges” he faced in government.
Labour backbencher Clive Lewis, who represents Norwich South, told the Guardian that Palantir had even begun coming up in conversations on the doorstep. “It’s not something like the NHS itself, or the economy – it’s a second-order issue,” he said, “but it is noticeable that people are aware and have mentioned it.” Lewis suggested the firm had become a byword for wider anxieties about AI, technological change, and the degree to which British public infrastructure was becoming dependent on companies whose values are far removed from those of the people they serve.
He also raised the geopolitical dimension explicitly: “I would also imagine that there is a dawning realisation in Whitehall about how uniquely exposed Britain is in so many ways, whether that is food security or data. What was unthinkable 18 months to a year ago in terms of our relationship with the US and US companies is now very much on people’s minds.”
Palantir’s defence
Palantir’s executive vice-chair in the UK, Louis Mosley, was swift to respond to the reports. In comments to The Times, he urged the government to resist pressure to walk away from the contract, framing opposition as politically rather than practically motivated.
“Having a review clause in a contract is good and normal practice. However, what some ideologically motivated campaigners are suggesting should happen would harm patient care and prevent some of the biggest challenges facing the NHS from being tackled,” Mosley said. “That would be a mistake. The clear evidence of the past two years of delivery is that our software is helping. It is forecast to deliver £150m in benefits by the end of the decade, representing a £5 return for every pound spent.”
The Department of Health and Social Care struck a similarly defensive note, telling the Guardian that the platform is “helping to join up patient care, increase productivity, speed up cancer diagnosis and ensure thousands of additional patients can be treated each month.” A spokesperson added that every hospital trust and integrated care board maintains complete control over who has access to their own instance of the platform.
Streeting, for his part, has also emphasised that Palantir does not have access to the patient data flowing through its systems. “The platform they have given to us to improve our systems, our performance, intelligence and tackling health inequalities – all of that is run by us. Palantir don’t see our patient data,” he told the podcast.
The political pressure mounts
From the opposition benches, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has welcomed the reported ministerial deliberations and gone further than the government in calling for a clean break.
In a post on X, Davey wrote that it was “about time that Wes Streeting kicked Palantir out of the NHS,” adding that “Trump’s favourite tech giant helps his ICE thugs target innocent people. They can’t be allowed anywhere near Brits’ private health data.”
The broader question is whether patient data security, rather than political symbolism, should be the decisive factor. On that, Streeting’s position is that the government’s increased oversight provides adequate assurance. His critics argue that the nature of Palantir as a company – its founding ethos, its existing government clients, and its ties to figures who have sought to reshape democratic norms in the United States – make that assurance structurally insufficient, regardless of the contractual protections in place.
There are also wider questions about how the contract came to be awarded in the first place, and what due diligence was conducted on the political and ethical dimensions of embedding an American defence contractor so deeply into the NHS. Those questions have gained renewed urgency as the political landscape in Washington has changed.
What happens next?
The break clause is not yet active – it becomes available next year. Ministers are therefore not facing an imminent decision, but rather conducting what appears to be advance preparation for a potential exit. Whether the political will exists to actually pull the trigger – given the disruption to NHS services and the risk of litigation that would likely follow – remains unclear.
For now, the government finds itself in an uncomfortable position: committed to a contract it is publicly ambivalent about, with its own health secretary acknowledging the ethical concerns while simultaneously defending the deal’s continued operation.
You may also like: Journalist targeted in Labour Together ‘spying’ scandal blasts BBC over Josh Simons interview
Leave a Reply