NHS Federated Data Platform Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Ian Byrne
Main Page: Ian Byrne (Labour - Liverpool West Derby)Department Debates - View all Ian Byrne's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(1 day, 16 hours ago)
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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.