Well being officers concern Palantir’s status will hinder the supply of a “important” £330m NHS contract, in accordance to briefings seen by the Guardian, sparking contemporary requires the deal to be scrapped.
In 2023, ministers chosen Palantir, a US surveillance know-how firm that additionally works for the Israeli army and Donald Trump’s ICE operation, to construct an AI-enabled knowledge platform to join disparate well being information throughout the NHS.
Now it has emerged that after Keir Starmer demanded sooner deployment, Whitehall officers privately warned that the public notion of Palantir would restrict its rollout, which means the contract would not supply worth for cash.
By final summer time fewer than half of well being authorities in England had began utilizing the know-how amid opposition from the public and docs. The British Medical Affiliation (BMA) has stated its members might refuse to use elements of the system citing Palantir’s function in focusing on ICE raids in the US.
Palantir was this week known as “ghastly” and “a extremely questionable organisation” by MPs in the Home of Commons.
The fallout over Peter Mandelson’s relationship to the convicted baby sexual abuse offender Jeffrey Epstein has additionally affected the picture of Palantir, which employed the former US ambassador’s lobbying firm, International Counsel.
Earlier than he was sacked, Mandelson took Starmer to meet Palantir’s chief government, Alex Karp, at the tech firm’s Washington showroom.
MPs final week demanded larger transparency round Palantir’s public sector offers, which additionally embrace a £240m contract with the Ministry of Defence and with a number of police forces.
In a non-public briefing for Wes Streeting before a gathering with Palantir’s European boss, Louis Mosley, in June 2025, Division of Well being officers wrote: “The general public notion of the [Federated Data Platform (FDP)] throughout the procurement, after which in supply, has been affected by the profile of Palantir.
“We do not know the extent to which this is impacting on supply. It is, nonetheless, seemingly to make it tougher to go additional with the FDP, and to encourage the inclusion of GP knowledge domestically.”
The briefing was launched below the Freedom of Data Act to Foxglove, a tech equity marketing campaign group.
The officers stated the rollout had additionally been affected by debates about affected person privateness and considerations that the NHS was being “locked-in” to a single vendor, however added: “Many of those debates are inaccurate and are typically on account of misconceptions.”
Donald Campbell, director of advocacy at Foxglove, stated: “The prime minister and the well being secretary ought to hear to the public they serve once they inform them Palantir has no place in the NHS.
“They need to not be scheming with tech billionaires’ employees on how finest they’ll ‘mitigate’ the ‘public notion’ issues these tech giants deservedly face via their very own repellent behaviour.”
The BMA, which represents NHS docs, stated it has “lengthy opposed the involvement of Palantir in the supply of care and the use of affected person knowledge in our NHS, and it is regarding to see from this briefing that the authorities felt public concern about Palantir must be dismissed as ‘misconceptions’”.
The briefing doc prompt Streeting might ask Palantir how to velocity up the rollout, and say that the authorities was eager to “take away pointless obstacles” together with by revisiting “rules relating to confidential affected person information”.
Streeting on Monday sought to present he had “nothing to conceal” relating to his relationship with Mandelson by publishing their WhatsApp messages between August 2024 and October 2025.
None talked about Palantir, though in a single change simply over three weeks after Streeting’s assembly with the firm, Mandelson inspired him to go to the US and stated: “Want to plan. Plenty of tech firms and folks to speak to.”
New figures launched on Thursday confirmed that the variety of NHS organisations utilizing the Palantir know-how has elevated since June from 118 to 151, which is nonetheless nicely in need of the goal of 240 by the finish of this 12 months.
Palantir was co-founded by the Trump supporter and billionaire Peter Thiel, who has beforehand stated “the NHS makes folks sick”, and described the British public’s affection for the NHS as a case of “Stockholm syndrome” – the time period for hostages who really feel a bond with their captors.
The previous Conservative authorities minister David Davis stated the authorities now confronted a “large value-for-money subject” over the Palantir contract.
He stated there had been “naivety in the senior administration of the NHS” in awarding a contract to an organization with “spectacular baggage by way of its genesis in the American safety state”.
“The federal government is going to have an issue with many hospital trusts and so they are going to have actually troublesome issues with the GPs,” he stated. “My finest estimate is they are going to by no means get most of the GPs with an organisation like Palantir.”
John Puntis, co-chair of the Maintain Our NHS Public marketing campaign, stated: “This appears to be like like one other instance of a massively wasteful IT contract, and lack of public belief will make it unworkable.
“They ought to finish the contract or not renew it. They need to settle for that the public is very involved and it is going to make the use of public knowledge very troublesome if folks suppose it’s going to be accessed by an organization like Palantir.”
A spokesperson for Palantir stated: “Palantir software program is serving to to ship higher public providers in the UK. That features delivering 99,000 extra NHS operations and lowering hospital discharge delays by 15%, in addition to serving to the Royal Navy maintain ships at sea for longer and the police to deal with home violence.”
A Division of Health and Social Care spokesperson stated: “The Federated Knowledge Platform is already delivering for the NHS – serving to to join-up affected person care, enhance hospital productiveness, velocity up most cancers prognosis and guarantee 1000’s of further sufferers could be handled every month.
“All suppliers undergo a rigorous, aggressive procurement course of in keeping with Authorities laws. All knowledge operates below the instruction of the NHS, with strict stipulations in the contract about confidentiality.”
NHS England declined to remark.
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