The drive to remove the US company Palantir from the NHS in the UK ramped up in the last few weeks, with the release of a briefing by the health justice charity Medact. The report, backed by doctors, lawyers, patients and human rights groups from the No Palantir in the NHS campaign, including the Good Law Project, Privacy International, and Corporate Watch, and supported by Amnesty International, was sent to hospital trusts and integrated care boards nationwide.
The report urges NHS trusts and ICBs not to implement the Federated Data Platform (FDP) developed by Palantir, and for NHS England to terminate the contract. It notes that partnering with Palantir risks weakening patients’ trust while “driving out locally tailored and trusted data solutions”.
The briefing said the “highly interoperable nature” of Palantir’s software could enable “data-driven state abuses of power”, including US-style ICE raids.
In 2027, the initial three-year contract with Palantir is up for review, and at this point, NHS England could end the contract.
But what makes Palantir such a controversial partner for the NHS? How did it get its reputation?
A quick overview of Palantir
US company Palantir, now based in Miami, was co-founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Joe Lonsdale and other collaborators.
The company is a data analytics firm specialising in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and software, commonly used by countries for surveillance, border enforcement, policing and warfare. In its early days, the company was supported by funding from the CIA’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel.
Palantir’s software programs can process vast amounts of data to identify previously undetectable patterns and connections. Foundry and Gotham are its leading software, with further analytics and decision-making through the AI Platforms, Apollo and Ontology. Upon starting a contract, Palantir often requires its own analysts to spend time within organisations, government departments and corporations to support the implementation of its software.
Palantir has worked with the US government for several years, but it is best known for its close ties to the Trump administration, many of which have become controversial. Palantir has contracts for military operations, policing, and border enforcement.
The company has multiple contracts with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), including designing a system to track undocumented migrants and select candidates for deportation.
In July 2025, the company signed a $10 billion deal with the US Army. Other recent contracts include an $795 million uplift to help the Pentagon develop an AI-targeting system called Maven and an agreement with the IRS to streamline its databases.
In early 2024, Palantir signed a deal with Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to provide “support for war-related missions”.
Palantir in the UK
Palantir’s strategy has been described as “land and expand”. In the UK, Palantir ‘landed’ in the NHS during Covid in 2020 with an initial short-term contract, it expanded, and in 2023, it became involved with the police in 2024 and the military in 2025. In March 2026, the company entered the UK’s financial services industry under an initial three-month contract with the Financial Conduct Authority.
Palantir has contracts with multiple UK government bodies. An investigation by The Nerve, published in January 2026, found at least 34 current and past state contracts across at least 10 government departments (including NHS contracts), local councils, and police authorities. The contracts which are worth at least £670 million, include MoD, Highways England, DEFRA, Local councils, such as Coventry City Council, the Home Office and the Government Digital Service. Palantir is providing AI investigation tools to 11 police forces.
In December 2025, the MoD awarded Palantir a £240 million deal for “data analytics capabilities supporting critical strategic, tactical and live operational decision making across classifications”. There was no competitive tender for the contract, but it was reported to have been helped along by Peter Mandelson, the former UK ambassador to the US. Palantir was a client of Mandelson’s firm, Global Counsel. The award follows the September 2025 announcement of a “strategic partnership” between Palantir and the MoD during President Donald Trump’s state visit to the U.K.
In March 2026, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announced that Palantir had been awarded a three-month contract to investigate the watchdog’s internal intelligence data to help it tackle financial crime, including fraud, money laundering, and insider trading. The UK financial regulation data is highly sensitive. Palantir will send in its employees to the FCA to install the software.
Palantir and the NHS
Palantir’s association with the NHS began in March 2020 when it was contracted by the NHS to help develop the NHS Covid-19 Data Store for a fee of £1. The aim of the Data Store was to help manage COVID-19 data and shape the government’s response to the virus. The contract was due to expire in June 2020, but a series of extensions by NHS England kept the contract alive. The final extension was in January 2023, to give NHS England time to resolve the twice-delayed procurement of a data platform (the federated data platform) to support health service reorganisation and tackle the massive care backlog.
Then in November 2023, as was widely predicted, NHS England awarded Palantir the contract to set up and operate the “federated data platform” (FDP). The contract includes support from Accenture, PwC, NECS and Carnall Farrar, according to a press release from NHS England. This published contract began in November 2023 and finishes in February 2027.
The contract award published on Contract Finder states an initial value of £182 million to Palantir over the period; this could reach £330 million, and the contract could be longer than three years. In a press release, NHS England said that “In the first contract year, investment is expected to be at least £25.6m. Over the contractual period of seven years, there will be up to £330m investment in the Federated Data Platform and associated services.”
The contract itself was published in late December 2023, after considerable pressure from campaigners, but it was heavily redacted, with 200 pages completely blacked out, particularly in sections related to personal data protection and service recipients.
NHS England has defended the FDP, saying the platform is delivering measurable improvements to patient care. According to its published data, acute trusts using the platform have carried out an average of 114 additional elective surgeries per month and achieved a 35% reduction in delayed discharge days. University Hospitals Sussex has reported saving 90 staff hours a week through improved waiting list management. NHS England has stated that identifiable patient data remains with the treating trust, that Palantir acts as a data processor, not a data controller and cannot use NHS data for its own products. Under current law, sharing patient data with the Home Office for immigration purposes would be illegal.
What are the concerns with Palantir
There are numerous concerns regarding the UK government doing business with Palantir. A full evaluation can be found in the Medact report, but they can be categorised into four broad areas:
- Allegations of complicity in human rights abuses and genocide
Palantir’s software is allegedly being used by states to carry out human rights abuses and other controversial or unethical practices. This includes its use by the US government in military, policing and border enforcement operations, as well as by the Israeli Defence Forces in abuses against Palestinians. In 2025, the UN Special Rapporteur named Palantir an enabler of the “unlawful use of force”. Amnesty International named Palantir as one of multiple companies enabling or profiteering from genocide, occupation, and apartheid.
- Activity surrounding the procurement of government contracts
The awarding of contracts in the NHS to Palantir has been tainted by accusations of aggressive, widespread lobbying.
Palantir’s approach to gaining contracts in the UK has included meetings with senior government ministers and NHS officials, including Matt Hancock, when he was a government minister, and Matthew Gould, who was CEO of NHSX. The company’s first COVID-19-related contracts were awarded without competitive tenders.
Palantir has also been accused of lobbying of civil servants and a “revolving door” for multiple NHS executives, such as Dr Indra Joshi, who was director of AI for NHSX until 2022, who then took a role as director of health, research and AI with Palantir, and Paul Howells who was the leader of the National Data Programme between 2018 and 2021 for NHS Wales before joining Palantir to work on health and care.
One of the most high-profile of these NHS executives is Matthew Swindells, who left his NHS role as Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Operations and Information in 2019 and two months later was working with Palantir through the firm Global Counsel (Peter Mandelson’s firm). Yet from April 2022 until March 2026, Swindells was also in the highly influential position of joint chair for all four acute Trusts in North West London, including Chelsea and Westminster. Despite the Trust board excluding Swindells from decision-making involving Palantir, he is reported to have privately urged colleagues to add more patient data to a Palantir-built platform while he was being paid to advise the US technology company.
- Political profile of leading Palantir executives
Palantir’s senior leadership are publicly associated with right-wing political beliefs. Peter Thiel is a leading figure in the American far-right movement and a supporter of Donald Trump. Thiel contributed $ 1.25 million to Trump’s 2016 election campaign and subsequently to a super PAC that backed JD Vance. He has also claimed that the NHS “makes people sick” and British affection for the health service is akin to “Stockholm syndrome.”
- Concerns with implementing the FDP designed by Palantir
There are concerns about the FDP designed by Palantir, including: reputational risk to the NHS from using Palantir; lack of staff support for the FDP (due to Palantir’s involvement); and privacy of the data held on the system, due to the product’s design.
The reputational risk to the NHS and the lack of support for the FDP are bound together by Palantir’s involvement in contracts for warfare, policing, border enforcement, and surveillance. This will affect the FDP’s long-term success. In October 2025, a senior source told HSJ that there was a fear that the controversy over Palantir’s involvement would slow the use of data to help improve NHS care.
Good Law Project’s campaign Say No to Palantir has seen around 50,000 patients writing to local trust boards urging them not to adopt FDP.
The British Medical Association (BMA) passed a motion at its 2025 AGM opposing the rollout of the FDP based on Palantir’s track record. In February 2026, the BMA announced it will tell doctors to limit engagement with the FDP because of its links with Palantir.
Data privacy concerns centre on whether patient data will be adequately protected. Palantir’s technology is known for its ability to move data across systems and link multiple government datasets. There is concern that the FDP technology could enable government departments, such as the Home Office and police departments, to access confidential patient information.
The sharing of data between government departments in this way is not legal at present, but there are concerns that this might change if other politicians are in power.
In a Guardian article, it was noted that Reform UK has already put forward the plan, if it got into power, of introducing legislation to enable the automatic sharing of data between the Home Office, NHS, HMRC, DVLA, banks and the police with the view to mass deportations.
Palantir would like such an overarching system for the UK government; in March 2025, in a witness statement provided to the UK covid-19 public inquiry, Palantir’s UK executive vice president Louis Mosley said ministers should invest in a system to “sit on top of, and be able to integrate with, the multitude of source systems across the local and central government, healthcare and other bodies of national strategic importance.”
How does Palentir respond to the criticism?
Palantir has rejected the criticism. A spokesperson said the company has “no intention of and no means” of enabling NHS patient data to be shared with immigration enforcement or other government departments, and that its software is helping to deliver better public services, including more NHS operations. In response to the BMA’s call for doctors to limit engagement, Palantir’s UK chief Louis Mosley told the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee that the BMA had “chosen ideology over patient interest.” The company has also pointed out that its contract with ICE dates back to 2011 and has continued across the Obama, Biden and Trump administrations, framing it as routine government work rather than partisan activity. GP leaders have pushed back, saying the BMA’s concerns are grounded in data governance, privacy and ethics.
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