NHS Federated Data Platform Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Susan Murray
Main Page: Susan Murray (Liberal Democrat - Mid Dunbartonshire)Department Debates - View all Susan Murray's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(1 day, 16 hours ago)
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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.