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Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the NHS Federated Data Platform.
We are at a key time for the NHS as it changes from analogue to digital, and data is key to achieving better health results for all our constituents, as well as to the future of the NHS. AI analysis of scans can spot patterns of disease before the human eye, and modern communications can be much more effective than sending letters, which often arrive late. We are, however, at a junction where we can correct a series of mistakes made in the direction of travel in this process. I ask the Government to mind the gap between expectation and reality. We can and need to change.
In November 2023, a contract for services approaching £500 million was signed for the federated data platform. The Government’s contracts tracker describes a data platform owned and controlled by the NHS
“to unlock the power of NHS data to understand patterns, solve problems, plan services for local populations and ultimately transform the health and care of the people they serve.”
Sadly, the FDP developed by Palantir is far from that description.
The NHS is an inherently distributed organisation, with trusts in charge of their own IT. Although NHS England has been working on a unified data dictionary and standards, imposing a single central IT solution has yet to work. Indeed, a single central system can become a single point of failure. Such a critical element of national infrastructure must be under full control, fully owned and trusted.
Although I understand the appeal of a slick salesman who persuades that they can solve all the problems in the NHS, build that one system to bind them all, and use AI like magic to provide all the answers, sadly, it is not reality. Is Palantir’s FDP a product that the NHS can own and trust, or have we bought the emperor’s new clothes that, after huge investment, leave us with nothing? I will outline why this solution is wrong in three significant points: the contract is wrong, the solution is wrong and the supplier is wrong and simply not delivering on its promises.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool Riverside) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for securing this important debate at this critical point. Does he agree that the opaque procurement of the Palantir contract, one of Mandelson’s dodgy deals, is deeply concerning? Does he agree that the full details of Mandelson and the Prime Minister’s visit to the Palantir headquarters in 2025 must be made public?
Martin Wrigley
I agree with the hon. Lady entirely. The secret meeting in 2019 between Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings and Peter Thiel—the founder and chair of Palantir—that started this whole thing, for which there are no minutes, must be clarified as well.
I ask the Minister to consider using the contract renewal point to stop the chaotic expansion of the Palantir platform monopoly, to work to a staged exit with a retender for British companies to build a replacement for Palantir, and to deliver a better, long-term solution providing British sovereign capabilities in line with principles outlined by the Science and Research Minister and the Prime Minister.
The current contract delivers a subscription service that leaves no deliverables after the subscription—no software, no improvements and no intellectual property after spending more than £330 million. All the specially written software and intellectual property rights belong to the supplier, says the contract. All the rights to any know-how are explicitly retained by the supplier and not passed across on termination of the contract. The contract delivers no software—not one line—just a subscribed service; a permanent lock-in; a single point of failure.
Why are we building a leased service wrapped in glossy marketing promises, rather than a product that the NHS can own and trust? We are paying the supplier to hire Accenture, PwC, NHS experts and consultants to create a solution that we do not own—the supplier does. It uses external AI platforms from OpenAI and Anthropic and brings questionable value itself. Prior to it buying an opportunity to provide its system to help manage the data from the covid vaccine programme, the supplier had no expertise in health.
The three-year contract asks for 13 core capabilities to be delivered. According to the National Audit Office and the supplier, after nearly three years, it has partially delivered on three or four of those capabilities. Hon. Members may have received letters from the supplier, which has also taken to sponsoring newsletters that we see every day.
When in front of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, the only benefit offered by the supplier and by NHS England was an improvement in managing staff rotas to deliver a higher operation throughput, which these days can be done by a relatively simple app. That is beneficial, but it perhaps relates more to the Government’s improvements in staffing and pay than to any magic from Palantir. It claims to have achieved waiting list reductions by removing people who do not respond to messages, but there is no external scrutiny or validation of results. This is a dreadful contract, and it is not in the national interest.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent case. I know that, in a moment, he will come on to the point that this contract is coming to an end. I am sure that it is being reviewed by the Government—the Minister will respond on that issue—but we are encouraging them to bring the contract to a close, for the reasons that my hon. Friend is properly explaining. He will perhaps also agree that we should go through a transition period to ensure that the conditions he has described are addressed, so that the Government can benefit from the software that has been developed.
Martin Wrigley
I think my hon. Friend has been reading my speech in advance. I absolutely agree with him.
I see that the outgoing NHS England chief data and analytics officer, Ming Tang, has publicly joined Palantir’s fightback, saying that the system is delivering—but having introduced Palantir and lobbied to deploy it, she would say that, wouldn’t she? Given Palantir’s habit of lobbying civil servants and the revolving door from Government, I wait to see where she will end up.
I ask the Minister to review the contract, particularly in the light of the Government’s policies on investing in UK tech, value for money, technical lock-in, key performance indicators and strategic supplier status, which suppliers should have. I ask the Minister to reject extending the existing contract, which locks in the NHS forever and delivers nothing tangible.
Susan Murray (Mid Dunbartonshire) (LD)
My hon. Friend is making some important points. Just yesterday, I highlighted the Scottish Government’s decision to buy Chinese buses, which come with a serious security risk. It would be wrong of me not to do the same when the UK Government take the same risks. We have some of the finest minds in the world here in the UK, but too frequently, we lose them to foreign firms that are out of our control. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should be developing Britain’s skills base here, and that whether it be buses or AI, we should be putting British jobs and British security first?
Martin Wrigley
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, as do the Prime Minister and the Science and Research Minister.
Turning to the solution, the solution is wrong. There have been many attempts to unify the NHS by using a single IT system; each one has failed. In reality, we must think of the NHS as thousands of independent organisations. NHS England has been guiding organisations towards a combined data dictionary for more than 10 years, combining definitions of what data means, how it is recorded and the way it is used. After three years, about half of the 200-odd NHS trusts across 42 integrated care boards are quoted as live on the FDP, and only a quarter of them report benefits from using it.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
My hon. Friend’s expertise in this area is impressive. I recently spent a shift with the South Western ambulance service and saw how critical it was for that service to be able to access both GP and hospital data—we had a lady who had had a heart attack, and we did not know who she was. Does my hon. Friend agree that the priority should be for the different elements of the NHS to talk to each other, rather than be scraped by a third party such as Palantir?
Martin Wrigley
I do agree. Palantir will not enable GPs, paramedics or anybody else to see hospital data. They will have to go through Palantir to see that data, and they will not be able to access patient records from the hospital to the GP or vice versa.
Like any data warehouse, Palantir requires connecting software that reaches into each of the NHS’s internal systems and gathers data. That data gathering is being done NHS trust by NHS trust, as there are differences inside each one. That is embedding the use of Palantir-owned code inside every NHS trust by creating custom connecting software to connect and translate data.
In Devon, the local ICB has celebrated as a major success the adoption of the same electronic patient record across Devon’s four main hospitals. It has just gone live in Torbay trust, which serves most of my Newton Abbot constituency. In an organisation as diverse as the NHS, with such distributed responsibility, we can either impose one massive system to rule them all or build interoperability. Interoperability would allow GPs to see hospital records and vice versa. Palantir is not doing that.
Interoperability is how massive systems, such as the internet or mobile phone networks, work. They do not rely on one single system or supplier. In that way, a modular system, a bit like Lego, can be constructed that, overall, is immune to changes elsewhere in the wider environment, providing only the specific data required to deliver improvements in services. That form of system builds long-term capability and delivers without requiring a locked-in, expensive subscription. It can also be built by a UK tech consortium in parallel with phasing out Palantir, which would build UK sovereign solutions, tech skills and competencies.
Meanwhile, NHS England’s October 2025 medium-term planning framework mandates all NHS providers of acute, community and mental health services to sign up to the FDP, and it demands that any existing local data analysis systems are removed. That results in further lock-in.
Sir Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
One of the issues that the hon. Gentleman has not discussed in his excellent speech is governance. The commissioner of the contract is the NHS, and it is also the main oversight body. He has put forward a black-and-white solution—end or maintain the contract—but is there not a case for a more robust governance structure? That could involve giving more powers to the National Data Guardian or setting up a bespoke oversight body for this contract.
Martin Wrigley
If the right hon. Gentleman looks at the contract, he will see that it is subscription only: deliveries under supplier software—none; deliveries under third-party software—none. Any programming written under the contract is owned by Palantir. The contract has to be adapted for any next phase so that Palantir can be moved out.
Palantir is not only the wrong technical solution; NHS users report that it is awful to use. An open letter to NHS England said:
“we already have similar tools in use that presently exceed the capability and application of what the FDP is currently trying to develop or roll out”.
An NHS worker said:
“We’re being forced to use a convoluted system that makes even the simplest tasks feel like pulling teeth. It’s demoralising, and honestly, it’s a waste of everyone’s time and public money”.
An NHS data analyst said:
“Not only could similar functionality have been delivered at a fraction of the cost, but the existing tools are already better integrated, more intuitive, and more conducive to collaboration”.
In early 2025, Greater Manchester ICB reported that the FDP
“does not currently have any system-level products that offer the same or better functionality, compared to the custom-built system already in use for NHS GM”.
An NHS developer concerned about Palantir wrote to me to say:
“There are any number of reassuringly boring companies that could deliver this contract, many of them based in the UK, and then we could just get on with the exciting work of using technology to improve care for our patients”—
quite right too.
We must halt this path of chaos before the costs build any higher. I ask the Minister to use the change from NHS England to allow a change of direction towards a distributed, interoperable UK sovereign solution. Will the Minister cancel the expansion of the FDP to community and mental health service providers?
Palantir is the wrong supplier. Its name comes from a magical seeing stone in “The Lord of the Rings”. It is how the evil lord Sauron corrupted the good wizard Saruman—I think we should have known at the beginning. Funded initially by the CIA as a defence contractor, Palantir’s vision is to become the default operating system for data-driven decisions in high-stakes institutions.
Palantir’s chair, Peter Thiel, wrote:
“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
He has warned about the coming of the Antichrist in the form of an oppressive world government. Palantir’s stated aim is to have domination over most Government Departments across the US and allies, including healthcare Departments. Louis Mosley of Palantir UK recommended that the UK Government develop a “common operating system”, combining healthcare and central Government data. That is just mad.
Palantir is a company that builds lock-in into its architecture as a clear business tactic. Palantir’s Foundry system was installed for £1 to manage covid vaccination programmes, after high-pressure lobbying and persuasion. It bought the advantage for future contracts by providing the system for free. The company had no healthcare experience prior to the pandemic, and demonstrates a lack of data security by design. However, the main issue is trust. The future of the NHS depends on intelligent use of data with patients’ trust. Gaining the public’s trust for research that involves AI will be hard enough anyway, without a company like Palantir controlling it all.
Palantir and its NHS England advocates claim big benefits for the NHS. The BMJ this week published analysis of the initial Palantir trial at Chelsea and Westminster hospital that shows the benefits to be exaggerated and untrue. The National Audit Office has yet to assess the value of the deliveries to date and cannot confirm the numbers in Palantir’s claims. Even if we accept that Palantir has delivered some benefits, they are hardly worth £330 million or the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority’s estimated whole-life cost of over £1 billion.
In addition, Palantir’s history with the Government is not good. After secret meetings and intensive lobbying in 2020, Palantir won a £27 million border control contract—without competitive tender, just like the Ministry of Defence contracts. The border system was subsequently terminated as it had no users and no value.
We need to replace Palantir, the chaotic, all-seeing, single-point-of-failure, data-hungry AI solution. We need a well-architectured, security-by-design, resilient and nationally significant bedrock FDP in the NHS for years to come that must be powered by UK technology. That will build UK skills and business, pay dividends for years to come and build trust from the UK public. The British Medical Association says that
“an FDP has the potential to transform how care is delivered, but only if it is done right—via a UK-owned FDP that has the full confidence and support of the profession and patients.”
I ask the Minister to take action now to stop the expansion of the Palantir solution, to review the dreadful subscription contract with Palantir, and to rebuild the FDP project to deliver a sound, sovereign system to make our NHS thrive in the world of data-driven health.
Several hon. Members rose—
Dame Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)
Order. Mr Wrigley has asked me if he can sum up at the end of the debate—his chances were in his hands. Because the debate is so popular, I will now impose a two-and-half-minute time limit on contributions. I call Dawn Butler.
Dawn Butler (Brent East) (Lab)
It is wonderful to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain.
The reality is that the Government have inherited a mess. We must not take responsibility for that mess. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) on securing the debate; he mentioned the £1 that Palantir paid to get its foot in the door. Some might say that was a smart business move; others might say that was a con or a trap. The first responsibility of a Government is to ensure that they protect their citizens. In order to do that, we must have AI and data sovereignty. We must ask ourselves: does Palantir allow us to have that AI and data sovereignty? I think the answer to that is no.
We have too much reliance on US systems. I was in hospital just the other week and the system is designed for the US, so that QR codes can be scanned at every action, because in America patients have to pay for everything, from blood tests to anything else. We do not have to deal with that, because luckily we have the NHS.
To say that we cannot do better in the UK just is not true. Unison and the BMA have severe concerns about Palantir, and they have said that they would like the Government to have a system that is based on ethics and values. That should be our starting point—a system of ethics and values. There are better alternatives and it is untrue to say that there are not. The BMA and Unison briefing talks about local platforms that already exceed FDP capability. For example, OpenSAFELY, developed at the University of Oxford, is an open source, privacy-preserving platform that has supported more than 200 NHS research projects.
The reality is that 30 people decided on the contract. Unison represents 1.3 million public service workers, and the BMA represents all doctors. They all have concerns. The Government need to cut loose the relationship with Palantir and have a transparent review that includes workers, trade unions and the public.
Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain.
In a briefing for investors, Palantir chief executive officer Alex Karp said:
“we are super proud of the role we play, especially in places we can’t talk about…Palantir is here to disrupt…and when it’s necessary, to scare our enemies and on occasion kill them.”
If it looks evil, if it smells evil and if it behaves evil, then it is evil. I thank the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) for securing this debate. Given my lack of speaking time, I am going to have to cut my speech short.
We must examine Palantir’s record elsewhere in the world in our assessment of its suitability as a supplier to the NHS. Palantir has long-standing contracts with United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the tools to track and target migrants that it has provided to ICE have facilitated racial profiling, family separation and violations of due process. In January 2024, Palantir entered into a strategic partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Defence to support war-related missions, meaning that its advanced data systems are used to perpetuate a genocide against the Palestinian people. Reports from Novara Media and the Financial Times state that NHS staff have been warned that they could be fired for criticising the NHS contract with Palantir, that NHS organisations are under pressure to sign up voluntarily to the Palantir data system, and that technicians have been told to stop working on alternate systems.
The Swiss Government have previously rejected engagement with Palantir, raising national security concerns; in the US, hospital systems in New York have moved away from Palantir arrangements, citing data governance and control issues; and here at home, uptake of the FDP remains uneven, with many NHS professionals reluctant—in some cases refusing—to engage with it. Perhaps most concerning of all are the reports that patient data opt-outs do not apply to the federated data platform due to a legal direction issued under section 254 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, yet that direction has not been published or named or been subject to scrutiny. This debate is not about technology; it is about who we trust to sit at the heart of our NHS, and on that question, the Government must think again.
Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this issue, because my constituents in South Derbyshire, like millions of NHS patients across the country, deserve honest answers about who holds their most private data, and why.
The federated data platform is, in principle, exactly the kind of innovation that can help to transform our NHS: it could connect fragmented data across trusts, reduce discharge delays and cut cancer diagnosis times. Those are goals that every Member of this House can support. The question before us today is not whether we want a modern, data-driven NHS—we do—but whether Palantir is the right company to deliver that.
The £330 million contract was awarded to Palantir to deliver the FDP, but its co-founder, Peter Thiel, has been openly hostile to the very idea of the NHS. Should a company of that character be trusted as a custodian of the intimate health records of tens of millions of British citizens? I do not dismiss the technology itself—the platform is genuinely impressive—but we cannot separate a company from its leadership. The Health Secretary himself has acknowledged that the “political views and…outlook” of Palantir’s founders and bosses are
“well off to the right”
of even the official Opposition—or the party that likes to think of itself as the official Opposition. When the co-founder of a company holds our NHS in open contempt, and when its chief executive is a prominent ally of an Administration that this House has repeatedly criticised, it is entirely reasonable to ask whether that company should occupy such a sensitive position at the heart of our public health infrastructure. This is not about ideology; it is scrutiny, which is precisely what this House is here to provide.
We also know that when the contract was first published, 417 of its 586 pages were completely blanked out, and it took a legal challenge from the Good Law Project to force the release of a substantially redacted version. That is not the transparency that the public have the right to expect. If we want NHS staff and patients to embrace a digital future, that future cannot be built on a foundation that they do not trust.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I thank the hon. Gentleman for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) for giving us the opportunity to think about and discuss this important issue.
Central to my contribution is the issue of trust, which the hon. Gentleman also referred to. We stand at a crossroads in the history of our national health service. For too long our frontline staff—the very heartbeat of our communities—have been battling a 21st-century crisis with 20th-century tools. They are held back by fragmented systems that do not speak to one another, waiting lists that remain stubbornly high, and expectations and red tape that are obstacles to actually practising medicine and helping our people.
I want to look at the issue of trust. The federated data platform represents a significant opportunity for change. By connecting trusts and boards, we are not just moving numbers on a screen; we are making sure that surgery happens sooner rather than later. The DUP supports the maximisation of technology, but we will never support the compromise of trust. Protecting health and protecting rights must go hand in hand.
I have three issues and three requests to raise with the Minister. On local control and accountability, there must not be a Big Brother database in Whitehall. Each hospital trust must remain the master of its own house, acting as the sole controller of its data. Can the Minister provide assurance that private partners are mere processors, locked out from selling our data or using it to train their own models?
Secondly, on compromising security, with the rise in cyber-threats, good enough is no longer enough. The Government must ensure that privacy-enhancing technology promised to us is not just a secondary feature, but a robust, audited shield that keeps personal identities anonymous.
Thirdly, on patient empowerment, my vision for the NHS is one where every citizen can access and input into their own medical record online. Data should empower the patient, not just the system. We have heard concerns about the choice of suppliers and the ethics of data sharing. We must be certain that we have solutions to those concerns and not just hope that it will work.
To conclude, the DUP—and I as its health spokesperson—wants Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom to lead the world in e-health. We will only do so if we can look every patient in the eye and say, “Your data is safe, your privacy is absolute, and your care is our only priority.” I look to the Minister and the Government to understand that fully and to agree to those three principles.
Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I thank the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) for securing the debate.
From links to serious human rights abuses to an ongoing lack of clarity around the security of sensitive patient data, a large number of my constituents have raised concerns about the ethical implications of using Palantir technology in our NHS. The hon. Member mentioned that a newspaper report in The Times on 9 April told us that the data chief of the NHS remains committed to the use of Palantir’s technology across the health service despite the company’s ties with ICE and the US military. I have written to the chief executive of Stockport NHS foundation trust as well as the Greater Manchester ICB on that issue.
Amnesty International and Medact, an organisation that brings together health workers in the UK, have been vocal in urging hospitals not to use Palantir software and have highlighted the link to some very concerning instances of human rights abuses.
Navendu Mishra
I am limited for time and the hon. Member has already contributed, so I ask him to accept my apologies.
Patients must feel confident that their data is handled transparently, securely and in a way that reflects British values. That is why we should be investing in and developing our own sovereign technological capabilities here in Britain. I want to see Britain at the forefront of science and technology, and that starts with backing our own institutions. The UK has a proud heritage of education, with some of the finest universities and institutions in the world. We should be investing in them instead of relying heavily on foreign companies.
France has set a good example here. The French Government are moving all their desktops from Windows to Linux as part of a nationwide strategy to reduce reliance on US tech giants. We should take similar action in the UK. Retendering the federated data platform could benefit the country, addressing ethical and security concerns while also delivering long-term economic and technological benefits. I know the Minister is an NHS worker—a transplant surgeon—and on behalf of the people of Stockport, I thank him for the work that he does for the NHS. I know he will take seriously the point that it is not just the cost of the £330 million to the British taxpayer that cross-party Members here are concerned about; they are also concerned about their private, personal health data and the ethical behaviour of Palantir. I hope he will take the concerns raised today urgently back to the Government.
Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)
It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. A nation, like a person, is judged by the company it keeps, and in this case, the companies to which it keeps handing taxpayers’ money. I tend to count my worth by the list of my enemies, and if I make one of Palantir today, I can count it as a good day’s work.
To be clear, the Government’s engagement with Palantir is shameful. Peter Thiel, the founder of Palantir, is a dangerous extremist who has called the Nazi Carl Schmitt a major influence on his thinking. He has allowed Palantir to provide sensitive data to Donald Trump’s far-right thugs in ICE to add power to their cruel elbow as they come crashing down on communities. Peter Thiel hates our values and hates the very principle of our NHS. He once told the Oxford student union that our love for the NHS is a form of Stockholm syndrome. Palantir and Peter Thiel must have their hands ripped off of our NHS before it is too late. We cannot stand idly by and let the NHS be rescued from years of Conservative neglect just to have critical functions and funding handed to a far-right US tech billionaire. The interweaving of Palantir’s opaque software with the framework of the NHS would make us dangerously dependent on and vulnerable to the whims of his strange organisation.
This Labour Government have had two years to signal their intention to end their partnership with Palantir, but they have failed to do so. I have some questions for the Minister. First, are the Government investigating ongoing reports of unethical lobbying efforts within the NHS and shady public relations by Palantir? For instance, we have seen allegations that the joint chair of north-west London’s four major hospital trusts was privately urging colleagues to add more patient data to the platform at the same time as advising Palantir through Global Counsel.
Secondly, have the Government taken any steps to make sure that the security and integrity of NHS data systems are iron-clad in the event of any rogue actions not just by Palantir, but by any third-party contractor? At that point, simple litigation for breach of contract would be moot; the damage will have been done. The Government should not need to do this—they should just wind down the contract. At the very least, they should tell my constituents who have written to me on this topic whether their concerns, which have been raised in this debate, are falling on deaf ears.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I thank the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) for securing this excellent debate today. I agree with every word that has been spoken about this US spy tech company, which is now deep into our NHS data and our constituents’ patient data. We have got to take the example of the Swiss Government, who withdrew Palantir’s access to their data because of the risks of US intelligence gaining access to sensitive data, the potential loss of national sovereignty and the dependence on foreign specialists.
As has been mentioned, we know that Palantir has been used in the US to power up the ICE teams in targeting their actions. I fear what a future Government could do with this data. While I am sure that this Government would not even consider such measures, a future Reform UK Government might use it to target vulnerable people. We know that there are already significant health inequalities in our health system. We can just imagine minoritised groups not sharing vital health information with clinicians for fear of what may happen in the future. That would widen health inequalities and put those individual patients at risk. As a former clinician in the NHS, I know that trust is key. If a clinician does not have the confidence and trust of their patients, that will result in worse health outcomes. In the interests of our constituents’ health, I urge the Government to end this contract.
I note that the former Secretary of State for Health who signed the contract, the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), has not turned up to this debate to defend his record. That says everything about the lack of accountability on the signing of these contracts. Palantir has eight major footprints across Departments and public services, to the tune of more than £800 million. Palantir is not the only company. Other clients of Global Counsel, such as with the pharma deals, have signed deals and are unaccountable to this House. It comes back to this question: how do we hold the Government to account for the contracts they sign? Often it feels like we are negotiating on legislation, but not on the big decisions, such as the signing of major financial contracts in the NHS.
Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)
Let me be clear: as a practising optometrist, there is nothing more wonderful than touching a button and a patient’s data going to the right people, and I am sure that the Minister will agree. The patient can then be treated appropriately and on time. However, the Darzi and Sudlow reviews, which were published last year, confirmed that our health data system is broken and fragmented, which costs patients dearly.
The public overwhelmingly supports better data sharing and so do I. In my opinion, the question is not whether we need data sharing, but who is responsible for this modern-day oil? As has already been said, Palantir was named after the seeing stones from the book “The Lord of the Rings”, the palantíri. Those stones possessed enormous power. However, I want to be fair about them. The stones themselves were not good or evil; they were powerful instruments of vision. In the right hands, they brought clarity and wisdom. The problem, as Tolkien understood it, is never the stone itself; it is who is holding it. Let us have a look at who is holding these stones.
As has already been mentioned, Alex Karp said this year that Palantir wants
“to scare our enemies and on occasion kill them.”
The co-founder of Palantir, Peter Thiel, has written that he no longer believes that freedom and democracy are compatible. He has said that the NHS is making people sick and that the British public’s love for the jewel in our crown—the national health service—is a form of Stockholm syndrome.
Those are the stated beliefs of the men at the top of a company that we have handed £330 million to, and a £1.5 billion strategic partnership with the British state. And Palantir’s ambitions do not stop there. Its chief operating officer has spoken of a future where Palantir software is inside every missile and every drone. In Gaza, Amnesty International has named Palantir as a contributor to the war crimes and genocide being committed there.
In fact, when a protester confronted Palantir’s CEO about the killing of Palestinians—100,000 and counting—in Gaza, he replied that the dead were “mostly terrorists, that’s true.” Over 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza and the CEO of the company that holds our NHS data calls them “mostly terrorists.”
It is not just the NHS that is affected. Palantir is the second largest AI supplier to the UK public sector by contract value. It has contracts with the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government, the Cabinet Office, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, local authorities and local police services, including those in Leicester South.
The Palantir contract review comes in early 2027, so the window is still open. I want to share a scan with a specialist and get an answer before my patient leaves the room; every clinician in this country wants that and every patient deserves it. But the seeing stone is only as safe as the hands that hold it. Choose those hands carefully.
Ian Byrne (Liverpool West Derby) (Lab)
I first raised concerns about the Palantir contract in August 2023, in a letter I wrote to the Health Secretary in the previous Government. I am here today to raise my huge concerns again, because I believe that this contract is an affront to the values of our country and the NHS.
Palantir’s co-founder and chairman Peter Thiel, a historic Donald Trump backer and donor, has said that the NHS makes people sick and has called for its privatisation. Palantir deals in chaos, oppression and war, all in the pursuit of power and profit—the antithesis of the values that our NHS was built on. I also note with keen interest that New York City Health and Hospitals has pulled out of a contract with Palantir due to ethical concerns, which I will now outline.
In its own country, Palantir’s software enables the raids by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, that forcibly separate children from their parents and carry out prolonged detention and deportation. What is even more startling is a leaked document that showed the platform’s ability to generate dossiers on individuals and to mine data from the American Department of Health and Human Services. That is exactly the type of data that Palantir now has access to here.
Palantir should be nowhere near our NHS data and patient data, and that view reflects the hundreds of emails that I have had from extremely concerned constituents, which is an experience that I am sure is shared by Members across this House. People are genuinely frightened, and a loss of trust in the NHS is potentially catastrophic to health outcomes in the UK, as the Minister will know more than most.
Palantir’s reprehensible contribution to human rights abuses has been even more devastating in its complicity with the Israeli Government’s ongoing war crimes. A UN report in June 2025 found Palantir’s technology to have accelerated the Israeli Government’s campaign. It is shameful that Palantir is anywhere near anything that we have in this country.
Our NHS was built on a simple, powerful idea: healthcare is a human right, not a commodity. It was built on the trust of patients who must share personal details to receive the care they are promised. As a company arming slaughter in the middle east, mining American citizens’ health data to conduct violent deportations and advocating the demise of the NHS, that trust cannot be Palantir’s to hold. We call on the Government to exercise the break clause in this contract in 2027, award no further contracts to Palantir and create a publicly accountable and ethically grounded approach to the handling of data.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) on securing it and on his excellent speech.
Palantir received a massive contract from the UK Government, apparently starting in about 2019. Some may recall that during that general election campaign, I accused the Government of undertaking secret negotiations with US health providers to take over our NHS. What was the response of our media? That I was peddling Russian propaganda. They refused to engage in a serious debate about the way in which US companies were trying to undermine not just the NHS but our public services as a whole. Palantir already has a £330 million contract with the NHS and is trying to get its hands on much more. It is hopefully under threat in many other countries where it is trying to operate, such as Germany, where human rights organisations are pressurising it because of its behaviour and attitudes.
This company is getting its clutches into our NHS, and it appears to be pressurising every local hospital and NHS trust to join the Palantir system. My local hospital, Whittington hospital, so far is not part of that system and says it does not wish to be part of it, as have many others, but we need a clear steer from the Government. I do not blame the Government for the contract—they did not sign it; they inherited it. But they have the opportunity now to say that they will end it when the opportunity arises, which is less than 18 months away, and that they will use the interim period to develop a publicly owned, accountable system in our NHS.
We should be very proud of our NHS. It is universal, and Palantir is in danger of getting its hands on the personal health records of every single person who has lived or died since 1948, which it can use for research purposes. Since it is a conglomerate that covers all kinds of other services and was involved in the war in Gaza and the attacks on the Palestinian people, surely it is time, as the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) said, for us as a Parliament to challenge the Government on this and say: get this contract out of our NHS, and bring it back into public hands.
Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under you, Dame Siobhain. I thank the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) for securing this important debate and for his excellent speech, demonstrating tremendous technical expertise.
This £330 million deal signed in 2023 with controversial American spy tech firm Palantir to use its tech on the federated data platform may turn out to be another gigantic waste of taxpayers’ hard-earned money. This is not just about money; it is also a moral and ethical misstep, given this firm’s links to work with the Israeli military and with the disgraced US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency—so-called ICE. Members and the general public will be aware that health data provided for one purpose has been used to track, detain and deport so-called illegal immigrants in America.
There are now persistent reports that issues of trust in the NHS among the wider public over this firm’s clear breach of data protection may lead the Government to use a break clause in the contract in 2027 to prevent renewal of this seven-year deal. I know that the BMA is not on the Secretary of State’s Christmas card list, or possibly the Minister’s, but he would do well to note the briefing it issued only yesterday, in which it calls for the use of the break clause and the retendering of this contract. If the Government are serious about tech sovereignty and investing in UK tech and AI, that is what they must do.
The roll-out of Scotland’s MyCare.scot app begins this month, with the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care describing it as the “most comprehensive” NHS app in the UK, created in-house and free from dodgy tech giants. I see the Minister laughing, but I want to reinforce that point, because it was made today by the First Minister of Scotland, John Swinney, at the launch of our manifesto.
To be fair, Palantir says that it will not use health data outwith the NHS as it would constitute a breach of contract and would, of course, be illegal, but England faces the rise of a political party that could change the law to suit its political purposes and ride roughshod over our basic privacy and human rights protections. If Members do not believe me, they should look at the US of A.
In conclusion, I hope the Minister will clarify in his response whether the situation is under review, and I urge the Government to reconsider their position, to implement the break clause next year and to invest in our own solutions, just as Scotland is doing.
Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I commend the determined and forensic work on this topic by my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley). The key reason I am attending and speaking today is because we love our national health service. For all its challenges and flaws, it is a key part of British society and identity, and we all want it to succeed. There is no question that improved stewardship and use of data are important, but they have to be done with public consent and trust. Palantir’s involvement in some of the critical change processes in the NHS places that at risk.
My first concern is the process and governance around appointing Palantir to its UK contracts. The process by which that was done has not been clear and, as others have said, it is essential that this Government seize the opportunity to do the right thing and come clean on exactly how that contract was awarded to a company mired in controversy and with no previous healthcare specialist expertise.
Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the key issue, as raised by the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), is accountability to this House for these contracts? Big contracts can be signed replete with assurances about protecting the public and protecting patients’ data only to morph into an entirely different kind of contract, relationship and company in the future.
Olly Glover
I very much agree with my hon. Friend that accountability to this House is always a critical consideration.
The second concern is Palantir’s track record and motivations. I shall not repeat too much of what others have said, but its close ties with the US Government and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, as well as its background in security and surveillance more widely, are a key concern, as well as its role supporting the Israel Defence Forces in the Gaza war.
My biggest concern and that of the dozens of my constituents who have written in are the geopolitical sovereignty and data protection implications. Dozens of constituents have contacted me about Palantir’s work, business practices and leadership, which raise ethical and civil liberty concerns that are not compatible with UK values around privacy, democratic accountability and the responsible use of public data. Indeed, a YouGov poll in partnership with Foxglove, a tech justice campaign group, before the contract was awarded found that almost half of adults would opt out of sharing health data with the NHS if Palantir was granted the FDP contract, and under half of NHS trusts have started using the technology due to patient and doctor opposition.
There is a strong case for sovereignty over the UK’s data given that many allies in Europe also do not feel comfortable using American companies like Palantir. There are many suitable UK companies or those from trusted and reliable allies. For example, Kahootz based in my constituency provides a lot of software to Government agencies. The House has been clear in this debate about the concerns, and we all await the Minister’s response as to what will happen next.
Dame Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)
It is an honour to serve under your chairpersonship, Dame Siobhain. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) for his tenacity and expertise in this subject. He has done a huge amount of research, and made an absolutely excellent speech.
At a moment of rising global instability, it is extraordinary that we are prepared to trust the health of our citizens and the functioning of our NHS to a US corporation that does not share our values or interests. Outsourcing the storage, handling and analysis of NHS data to a foreign company, rather than securing the national and economic benefits of this work being done by a British or UK-led organisation, is yet another example of our unnecessary reliance on others to keep our vital infrastructure running. Doctors and the public have made it clear that they do not trust this company. Fewer than half of NHS trusts have begun using this technology, in large part because of the concern from patients and clinicians. If, as the Health Secretary says, the federated data platform is
“absolutely critical to the future of the NHS”,
placing it in the hands of a company that staff and patients do not trust risks undermining that future from the outset.
This is the central issue: we hold doctors and nurses to the highest ethical standards, and rightly so. We expect them to protect confidentiality, to act with integrity and to put patients first. So why are we asking them to use a system they do not trust and stake their professional reputations on it?
Palantir is not a neutral contractor. It is a company that is deeply embedded within the political ecosystem of Donald Trump, a convicted felon whose Administration has repeatedly undermined the international rule of law. It is a company that has worked hand in glove with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whose behaviour is morally and legally outrageous and whose agents have operated like masked vigilantes in the deportation of individuals. We are all aware of the tragedies that that rogue Trump organisation has left in its wake. Why are we allowing a Trump-aligned company to sit at the heart of Britain’s most precious public service? Why are we comfortable placing NHS data in the hands of a company whose values are so clearly at odds with those of the British public?
This is not a technical decision—this is a political choice. The NHS is not only one of our most important public services but one of the largest areas of public spending. Therefore, it is deeply concerning that Palantir’s contract for the federated data platform is so heavily redacted that it makes scrutiny almost impossible.
Iqbal Mohamed
Health inequality in the NHS for people of ethnic minorities is a challenge that we need to address. The New Orleans police department and the Los Angeles police department both terminated Palantir-powered predictive policing due to the system’s reinforcing racial bias and creating feedback loops to overpoliced communities that were affected. Does the hon. Member agree not only that the company and its leaders are unethical but that the systems it supplies are unethical and racist?
Dr Chambers
That is an important point. Amnesty International, whose representatives I believe are present, and others including voices within the NHS have been raising serious concerns about the potential misuse or inappropriate sharing of sensitive data. The Government must come clean about how the contract was awarded in the first place and what steps they will be taking to bring it to an end.
We should be building NHS data processing capacity here in the United Kingdom, strengthening our resilience, backing our own expertise and building sovereignty in a more dangerous world. Instead, we are exporting control of one of our most valuable national assets. I ask the Government today to use the break clause, stand with NHS staff, protect patient trust and keep Donald Trump and his allies out of our NHS.
Dame Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)
I call the Government spokesperson—[Interruption.] I call the Opposition spokesperson.
Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst (Solihull West and Shirley) (Con)
I was expecting a promotion there, Dame Siobhain. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) on securing the debate. He has brought forward an issue that sits right at the centre of how we shape the future of our national health service: how we use data, who we trust with it and how we ensure that technology supports care rather than complicates it.
The debate has been a thoughtful one, and in many respects it has been revealing. It has shown both the promise of the NHS federated data platform and the unease that still surrounds it. That tension really matters. I am grateful for the significant contributions we have heard from right hon. and hon. Members, with 13 coming from the Back Benches by my count. Let me start by setting out where I think there is common ground across the House.
The NHS is under enormous pressure as demand is rising, complexity is increasing and waiting lists remain too high. Too often, clinicians are working without the full picture in front of them. Anyone who has spent time in the health service knows that this is not a system that lacks dedication. It is, however, a system that too often lacks coherence. Data is part of that problem as it is scattered, fragmented and difficult to use in a joined-up way. Records do not always reliably follow the patient, and information is duplicated, delayed or simply not available when it is needed most. The consequence of that is not just theoretical; it is time lost, inefficiencies and, at times, patients not getting the care they should when they should.
The case for doing things better is a strong one; in fact, it is unavoidable. The FDP is one attempt to respond to that challenge. It seeks to bring together information in a way that allows the NHS to work more effectively, helping clinicians and supporting managers with the ultimate aim of improving care for patients. There are some early signs that this is beginning to deliver; waiting lists have been cleaned up, and some hospitals have reported better flow through theatres and wards. Those are practical improvements. As is so often the case in government, the easier question is whether something can work; the much harder question is whether it will be accepted. There are clearly concerns here.
We have heard about reluctance in part of the workforce. I am not suggesting there is uniform opposition, but there is certainly hesitation and, in some cases, disengagement. We should be careful, however, not to exaggerate that. Big reforms in the NHS have always faced resistance, often at the start. This is not necessarily something new, and on its own it is not necessarily decisive. At the same time, however, it is not irrelevant; if the people expected to use this system do not have confidence in it, its impact will always be limited. Will the Minister say what is the assessment of staff engagement with the FDP and how the Government are ensuring that this is something done with the NHS, rather than done to it? In the end, that will make the real difference.
The same issue arises with public trust. People are right to care about their medical data—it is sensitive, personal and deeply private. Once confidence is lost in this area, it is very difficult to rebuild it. There are important safeguards in place: the data remains under NHS control, the access is tightly regulated, and the provider does not own or use the data for its own purposes. The legal framework underpinning those safeguards is strong. Those are not minor points—they really matter.
However, we also have to recognise something else. People are not just asking whether the system is safe today, but what it enables tomorrow. Could the data be combined in ways that reveal more than people expect? Could systems evolve in ways not originally intended? Could future Governments choose to use the capability in different ways? Those are not unreasonable questions; they are the natural questions people ask when large new systems are created. Again, I ask the Minister what more will be done to reassure the public about the limits of how NHS data can be used and whether he can set out clearly where parliamentary oversight comes in if the use of data is expanded in the future. Trust is not built by reassurance alone; it is built by clarity and restraint.
A significant part of this debate has understandably focused on Palantir, and it is right that it has. Palantir is now a major supplier within the NHS data infrastructure as well as elsewhere across Government, and that raises legitimate questions about not just capability but dependence. For some the concern is political, while for others it is about principle. For many, though, it is something much more practical: what happens if we become too reliant on a single provider for something as critical as health data infrastructure? I think that is a fair question.
However, we should also separate those questions from the broader argument about the company’s international work. In a global economy, companies will inevitably work with different Governments, and that alone is not a sufficient reason to exclude them from public contracts in the UK. The question of procurement design, competition and resilience, however, is a different matter.
Dr Shastri-Hurst
If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will not. I want the Minister to have sufficient time to respond to the multiple contributions there have been today.
I ask the Minister the following questions. How are the Government ensuring that the NHS is not locked into a single supplier over the long term? What is the plan for maintaining genuine competition in this space? How easy would it be in practical terms to move to an alternative system if that was ever required?
There is then the issue of resilience. Some have argued that the FDP creates a single point of failure, while others have argued that the current fragmented system is itself a weakness and that greater coherence improves security and oversight. Both arguments deserve to be taken seriously. But practical questions remain: how resilient is this system to cyber-attacks or technical failure? What safeguards are in place? What happens if something goes wrong at scale?
The last matter I wish to address is that of governance. With the abolition of NHS England, there is now a question about where the responsibilities for the FDP properly sit. That matters because accountability cannot be diffuse. I take this opportunity to ask the Minister: who is responsible for the programme now, where does that accountability lie, and how will Parliament be able to scrutinise its performance going forward?
Better use of data has a real role to play in NHS reform, and the FDP may well prove to be part of that answer. Success will depend on more than just delivery; it will depend on confidence within the system: confidence from clinicians that the system helps rather than hinders them, confidence from patients that their data is properly protected and confidence from the public that our decisions are transparent, proportionate and properly accountable. If those conditions are met, this reform can succeed. If they are not, even the best designed system will struggle. We, as His Majesty’s loyal Opposition, will support what improves care and welcome what works, but will continue to ask questions that ensure reform is done properly in a way that sustains public trust. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dr Zubir Ahmed)
It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) for securing this important debate and for his and other hon. Members’ contributions to it. Of course, we should also welcome the hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-Hurst) to his place in his first debate on the Front Bench.
We have heard a lot about concerns and insights and interpretations about the NHS’s technological architecture. Some would have us think that the FDP is synonymous with just one company. It is not. The FDP is fundamentally an NHS construct. It consists of multiple contracts awarded to a number of consortia, including Palantir, Accenture, PwC, Carnall Farrar and the North of England Care System Support. Each of those have different responsibilities to make sure that there is training, health expertise and security in the FDP.
Ultimately, the FDP is a federation of local trusts and ICBs within NHS England, each with their own version of the FDP and their own abilities to decide which information they put there on the basis of their own service needs and governance arrangements. Although there should be scrutiny of Palantir and of any contract, we should also provide clarity about what the FDP is delivering for the NHS. It is my duty to make sure that the FDP is improving patient and clinical experience and improving patient outcomes.
Making the best use of data generated by the NHS and social care is essential to transforming services, improving outcomes for patients and making sure that we use resources in the best manner possible. Lord Darzi’s independent investigation into the NHS found that, despite huge volumes of data, fundamentally:
“The last decade was a missed opportunity to prepare the NHS”
to use the latest technologies.
The FDP is part of an infrastructure—it is not the infrastructure or the only infrastructure—resolve that gap. It is improving efficiency and generating savings across the health service worth up to £2.4 billion, according to independent estimates. Those independent estimates are being further bolstered by a commissioned study by Imperial College that will look at the economic impact of the FDP. It is an important tool for us being able to make the NHS fit for the future on clinical efficiency, transparency of data and outcomes for patients up and down the country.
Before I go into more detail about what the FDP does, it is important that I say what it does not do. For instance, it is not synonymous with the single patient record, the NHS app or—necessarily—with linking primary care data with secondary care data.
Dr Ahmed
I am going to carry on for a bit longer.
The hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) tempts me with his speech, and he knows that I cannot resist his temptation. He spoke about Scotland and he will know that I am an NHS surgeon in Scotland. I hope he thinks that I can speak with some authority about the NHS in Scotland, so let me tell him a few things about the digital architecture in the NHS there.
The NHS app has been running successfully in England for over eight years. Three out of four people in the NHS in England have that app. To clarify, the app is not Palantir; it has been devised organically on the ground by NHS England—by clinicians and by technologists. It now serves millions of patients to book test results, screenings and appointments—including GP appointments —to end the 8 am rush.
The hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East spoke about the MyCare app in Scotland. That remains a far-fetched dream rather than a reality. The limit of the ambition of that app seems to be, as I understand it, a dermatology service in one part of Scotland called Lanarkshire, for those who are not familiar with Scotland. It is a million miles away from what has been developed down here in England.
Dr Ahmed
I will not; I am going to carry on—and I will tell the hon. Gentleman something further. The NHS in England was quite happy to use the expertise of technologists up and down the country, including in Scotland—including, in my own constituency of Glasgow South West, a company called Cohesion Medical. His Government in Scotland, who have been in government for over 20 years, refused that offer. That is why my patients and constituents in Scotland are unable to access simple digital services. It is why my patients and my constituents under NHS Scotland are 30 times more likely to wait over two years for treatment. It is why my patients and my constituents in Scotland are unable to access optimal stroke therapy and lung cancer screening.
The NHS federated data platform in England connects health information held in different systems, helping to manage activity to improve productivity and outcomes. By connecting critical data streams, it can accelerate diagnosis pathways, streamline discharge processes and ensure faster, more co-ordinated care that reduces waiting times for all patients.
I will briefly describe a couple of examples. North Tees and Hartlepool NHS foundation trust uses an FDP product called OPTICA to map the patient’s journey from being admitted to going home. It used to be done with spreadsheets, which were not always updated. Because of that, discharges were delayed, medicines were not sorted on time—in some cases time-critical medicines, causing real patient harm—and patients were therefore impacted. OPTICA lets the trust see all that information in one place in real time. It has reduced the number of long stays by a third, and despite a 7% increase in admissions over that time, we are improving services overall.
Dame Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)
Order. May I just say that the hon. Member had very generous time allocated to him during this debate? If the Minister does not want to take an intervention, he does not need to.
Dr Ahmed
At the Mersey and West Lancashire teaching hospitals NHS trust, they are using the FDP to better manage the lists for planned surgery. That allows surgeons like me to operate on more people each day, and it is cutting waiting lists. This has been achieved through better use of data. It is a timely reminder that in England we are improving productivity in the national health service, getting more operations done per list and getting closer to pre-covid levels of activity. The same cannot be said for Scotland under the SNP Government.
Seamus Logan
Rather than giving so much of his speech to cheap political points about Scotland, can the Minister answer the question that was put to him several times by several Members: are the Government considering a review of the break clause next year?
Dr Ahmed
If the hon. Gentleman had read the details of any contract that the Government have negotiated, whether it is this one or the previous one, he would know that the break clause is there for a reason. Of course we evaluate value for money at those times. He used the word “cheap”, but let me tell him something: it is not cheap to have to wait over two years for NHS treatment in Scotland, which is 30 times more likely to happen than in England. That is why on 7 May the NHS in Scotland can get an upgrade with Anas Sarwar as First Minister and Jackie Baillie as Health Secretary.
The FDP is helping people get the care they need more quickly and more efficiently. As a programme, it is a success. The FDP has exceeded every single target since its go-live date in March 2024, and 137 NHS trusts are actively utilising the platform and have reported benefits. The programme is significantly exceeding its benefits forecast, with external independent experts validating these results.
NHS England publishes data on how the FDP has benefited patients and the NHS. The data collected up to the end of March will be published in May. I can share the figures with Members now. Since the go-live date in March 2024, more than 100,000 additional patients have been supported to undergo procedures in theatres, partly due to increasing theatre utilisation. Nearly 94,000 people have been supported on their cancer journey, with 7% seeing a reduction in the time taken to diagnose their cancer. There has also been a 14% decrease in delays to discharging patients staying in hospital for more than seven days, freeing up hospital beds for those who need them most.
The last Government awarded the Palantir contract on the basis of a successful bid that was deemed to be significantly better, and by a significant order of magnitude, than those of its competitors. It was judged the most economically advantageous and likely to deliver the best-quality outcome for patients. The contract was awarded with an overall value of up to £330 million over a maximum of the seven-year term. So far, £210 million has been invested, as we scale up. The benefits of the FDP are exceeding those we forecast, as I have already outlined, but—
Dr Ahmed
If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I think I will answer his point shortly; in the interests of time, we have to be careful about interventions.
We live in a fast-paced technological world, and that means that we always look to the next possible provider to provide value for money, so it is right that there are break clauses in the contract to allow evaluations to take place. I can reassure all hon. Members that, as a clinician and a Minister, my north star is always patient safety and quality, and of course value for money. If, at the point of the break clause, we evaluate and find that there are other providers that can do the job better, then of course that needs to be looked at and reflected upon. More generally, as the Minister for Health Innovation, Patient Safety and Life Sciences, I would not be doing my job properly if I did not try to champion British business at every opportunity or to champion British small and medium-sized enterprises to become British plcs. I hope hon. Members will take that as read.
The contract has extension provisions and will be reviewed in line with standard contract management processes. We will decide later this year whether to extend it. NHS England will be transparent about the process and the evidence used, as we have been throughout our regular performance reviews for this contract and the FDP.
On digital sovereignty, our priority is to give patients the care they need. As Members will no doubt understand, for some essential IT services, it is simply not possible to develop in-house solutions, as we seek the best from the market. I reflect on my own practice in Glasgow, in the Queen Elizabeth university hospital, which the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East seems to think has found a panacea of publicly delivered technology. I can tell him that when I walk into that hospital, I login through Microsoft Windows. Then I open a programme built by a North American tech company to order test results. Then I open another programme built by a North American tech company to look at the results of those tests. Finally, if I want to check X-rays, I open a fourth programme built by a North American technology company to evaluate CT scans, MRI scans and X-rays.
Dr Ahmed
In the interests of time, I will continue. I apologise to my hon. Friend.
In the future, our goal is to see a vibrant UK market in digital and technology, which would give the NHS more choices and help to improve standards. Of course, I would be unashamedly pro-British about my ambitions for that mix, because that is the way that we not only serve our NHS but also support economic growth. At the moment, what matters is who controls the data and how that is governed. I appreciate the sensitivities around that, I really do. Rightly for the FDP, this is a matter for the NHS and UK regulators.
I have also been asked about vendor lock-in and whether it is possible to remove companies like Palantir from the NHS. The answer is unequivocally yes, it is possible. Of course, it would take time and planning to safely transition from one supplier to another, as it always does in the NHS, when patient safety is the primary concern. At the moment, there are unfortunately only a small number of companies that can do what we genuinely need them to do at the scale that we need them to do it, but the contract has multiple measures built in to allow greater freedom of choice. That includes making sure that the NHS owns the intellectual property for all products and that it is possible to migrate them to other providers.
Data security is also at the heart of our health innovation programme. Protecting personal data is at the heart of the FDP and the health innovation strategy. Most importantly, we have separated church and state, in terms of service provision and data security. A separate company, IQVIA, provides the highest standard of privacy-enhancing technology for that data in the FDP, which means that we can remove personal identifiers from the data where they are not required, ensuring that privacy is maintained throughout. NHS England and NHS organisations retain full control as data controllers, including over decisions about how data is used, who can access it and which products are deployed. Palantir does not own the data, the products or the intellectual property, nor can it use the NHS data for its own purposes.
The FDP is a secure data environment. Security is built into its design and operation, and it has been through national, technical and cyber-assurance, with external oversight. It should also be understood that the FDP is only for health and care purposes; it cannot be legally used for non-health purposes such as immigration enforcement, as has been promulgated.
As Members will expect, my position on the owners and executives of Palantir is very much the same as that of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State—we are no fan of their politics. However, the FDP, and the principles that underpin it, are critical to the future of the NHS. Palantir operates strictly within a UK-regulated contract where the NHS controls all data, access is tightly governed and information can be used only for agreed purposes that benefit patients. I would expect any member of staff who did not in all conscience feel that they could work with Palantir to raise that with their employer.
Rachael Maskell
I raised the issue of patient trust. We know that over 50% of the public do not have confidence in this system, so they might not share vital health information with their clinicians. As a result, will the Minister include that point in the consultation? He has only 10 months until this first period ends, so can he say more about the public perspective on the Government consultation?
Dr Ahmed
My hon. Friend will know that no NHS system or pathway can ever work without the confidence of the public, and that needs to be reflected in any evaluations that take place. I have heard my hon. Friend’s concerns loud and clear, as well as those of Members across the House. It is right that we look to maintain the highest standards for our NHS. It is also true that the FDP has a role to play in delivering for the NHS and helping people get the care they need more quickly and efficiently. Those are real outcomes that will improve people’s lives, all through the better use of data.
Members on both sides of the House often rightly challenge me to go further, faster on rare diseases, rare tumours and rare cancers. None of that is possible in modern medicine without data, and the analysis of data. Just as I have a responsibility to ensure that we get value for money out of all contracts in the national health service, and that we evaluate them regularly, Members also have a responsibility to be careful not to aggregate different components of the NHS and present them as a monolithic technological solution.
The FDP is, and will continue to be, an important component of delivering patient care in the NHS in England. Of course, who contracts with the FDP will be open to question as we go forward and think about future contractual arrangements. It would be disingenuous to suggest that the FDP is somehow the only technological solution or database in the NHS; there are many others that do good work—whether that is the single patient record, the health data research service, the NHS app or clinical systems for NHS primary care providers. We must be careful not to conflate one technology with the next, and in doing so, alarm citizens and patients about what is happening with their data.
I can assure Members across the House that in my ministerial service—just as in my 20 years of clinical service—my north star is transparency, patient safety, quality and providing the best care to all patients up and down the country.
Martin Wrigley
I thank the Minister for his comments. However, I do not think he has been accurately informed about the status of the contract. I have the unredacted contract with me, which says nothing about software delivery. The whole thing is based on subscription, and the intellectual property of all specially written software, which is defined to include the data collection software, belongs to Palantir. None of this belongs to NHS. That is in this contract—I can show it to the Minister, if he likes. I thank him for his agreement to work towards a better future for our constituents, and we all agree that what we need is a trustable route forward in working with data that will make the NHS a real force in the 21st century.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the NHS Federated Data Platform.