“The government should exercise the break clause. It should also ensure any alternative provider is scrutinised both for involvement in grave violations of international law and for conflicts of interest.”
By Rathi Guhadasan
In November 2023, NHS England awarded Palantir a £330 million, seven-year contract to build the Federated Data Platform (FDP), promising a fix for the NHS’s fragmented data. Nearly three years on, the evidence from inside the NHS points the other way.
The most damning assessments come from NHS professionals themselves. Writing on behalf of the NHS Chief Data and Analytical Officer (CDAO) Network, its chair Marc Farr said that many data chiefs already use tools that exceed what the FDP is trying to deliver. Leeds Teaching Hospitals treats around 1.5 million patients a year. It told NHS England that adopting some FDP tools would mean it would “lose functionality rather than gain it”. Greater Manchester’s health authority found no Palantir product in the programme that exceeded its local capability. One NHS IT insider called the platform “a very overpriced data warehouse”.
The £330 million headline figure is less than a third of the programme’s officially estimated whole-life cost of £1.04 billion, and no one has independently assessed what trusts themselves spend to adopt it. In one example, University Hospitals Leicester received £2.75 million from DHSC to facilitate “the procurement of the federated data platform”, and there are also significant costs involved in retraining staff and transferring to the new system. At a time when we are facing crises throughout the NHS, with hundreds of deaths per week linked to overcrowding and prolonged waits in A&E, with waiting lists still over 7 million and staff facing the cost of living crisis with pay stagnant at well below inflation, we cannot afford to waste money on expensive contracts. Instead, we should be looking at in-house systems which also preserve our rights over our own data.
This is not only about value for money. The CDAO Network has warned of patient safety risks if working systems, such as cancer referral management, are closed down before FDP equivalents are ready. There has been no independent evaluation of the cost-benefit case. Yet NHS England paid KPMG £8.5 million to “promote adoption” among trusts. And by embedding its proprietary software at the heart of NHS infrastructure, Palantir gains considerable power over the health service’s future.
Trust matters as much as technology. In June, the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee urged ministers to exercise the 2027 break clause. In July, the Health and Social Care Committee made the same call. On 18 September, Palantir appointed former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson as its UK senior vice president. The same day, it was reported that a senior NHS England official had lobbied the government’s independent health data adviser to rewrite a critical statement shortly before Palantir won the contract. The SHA and others submitted emergency motions on this to Labour Party Conference – taking place this week – which were ruled out of order despite appeals, with no reason given. This was the last chance for party members to debate this before the government has to decide on the break clause. Palantir faces serious allegations of involvement in grave violations of international law, including through technology supplied to Israel’s military, and is therefore wholly unsuitable as a provider for the NHS.
Despite all this, NHS England expects every provider and ICB to onboard to the FDP and use its core products by 2028/29, whether or not they already have better systems.
The NHS does need better data infrastructure. But a genuinely federated model would serve patients better than a single proprietary platform. Trusts would link to a national data layer while keeping the tools and expertise that already work.
The government should exercise the break clause. It should also ensure any alternative provider is scrutinised both for involvement in grave violations of international law and for conflicts of interest. Public trust in the NHS, and in politics, depends on it.
- Rathi Guhadasan is the Chair of the Socialist Health Association (SHA). The SHA has been promoting health and wellbeing through socialist principles since 1930 and has been affiliated to the Labour Party since 1931. You can join or support their campaign here.
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