NHS deal with AI firm Palantir called into question after officials’ concerns revealed | NHS
Health officials fear Palantir’s reputation will hinder the delivery of a “vital” £330 million NHS contract, leading to fresh calls to scrap the deal, according to briefings seen by the Guardian.
In 2023, ministers chose US surveillance technology company Palantir, which also works for the Israeli military and Donald Trump’s ICE operation, to create an AI-powered data platform to link disparate health information across the NHS.
It has now emerged that Whitehall officials privately warned that public perception of Palantir would limit its rollout, meaning the contract would not provide value for money, after Keir Starmer called for faster deployment.
Last summer, fewer than half of health authorities in England had started using the technology, despite opposition from the public and doctors. The British Medical Association said its members could refuse to use parts of the system, citing Palantir’s role in targeting ICE raids in the US.
Palantir was described as a “terrible” and “highly dubious organisation” by MPs in the House of Commons this week.
The fallout over Peter Mandelson’s relationship with convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has also affected the image of Palantir, which operates the former US ambassador’s lobbying firm Global Counsel.
Before his dismissal, Mandelson had Starmer meet with Palantir CEO Alex Karp at the tech company’s Washington showroom.
MPs last week demanded greater transparency over Palantir’s public sector deals, which include a £240m contract with the Ministry of Defense and several police forces.
In a private briefing to Wes Streeting ahead of his meeting with Palantir’s European boss Louis Mosley in June 2025, Department of Health officials wrote: “The public’s perception of FDP at the time of acquisition and subsequent delivery was influenced by Palantir’s profile.
“We don’t know to what extent this affects delivery. But it is likely to make it harder to go further with FDP and encourage local inclusion of GP data.”
The briefing was released to Foxglove, a tech justice campaign group, under the Freedom of Information Act. Officials said debates over patient privacy and concerns that the NHS was being “locked” into a single vendor also influenced the rollout, but added: “Many of these debates are flawed and often the result of misunderstandings.”
Donald Campbell, director of advocacy at Foxglove, said: “The Prime Minister and health secretary should listen to the public they serve when they tell them Palantir has no place in the NHS. They should not be scheming with the staff of tech billionaires about how best to ‘mitigate’ the ‘public perception’ problems that these tech giants deserve to face with their own repulsive behaviour.”
The British Medical Association, which represents NHS doctors, said it “has long opposed Palantir’s involvement in the delivery of care and the use of patient data in the NHS, and it is concerning that from this briefing the government feels public concern about Palantir should be dismissed as ‘misconception’.”
The briefing document suggested Streeting could ask Palantir how to speed up distribution and say the government was willing to “remove unnecessary hurdles,” including reconsidering “regulations around confidential patient information.”
On Monday, Streeting sought to show that he had “nothing to hide” regarding his relationship with Mandelson by publishing WhatsApp messages between August 2024 and October 2025. None of them mentioned Palantir, but in a conversation just three weeks after Streeting met with the company, Mandelson encouraged him to visit the US, saying: “It takes planning. There are a lot of tech companies and people to talk to.”
New figures released on Thursday showed the number of NHS organizations using Palantir technology has risen from 118 to 151 since June; This number is still well below the target of 240 by the end of this year.
Palantir was co-founded by Donald Trump supporter and billionaire Peter Thiel, who has previously said “the NHS is making people sick” and described the British public’s love for the NHS as a case of “Stockholm syndrome”, a term for hostages who feel a bond with their kidnappers.
Former Conservative government minister David Davis said the government now faced a “huge value for money problem” over the Palantir contract. He said there was “naivety on the part of the NHS’s senior management” in awarding the contract to a company with “extraordinary baggage in terms of its birth in the American security state”.
“The government will have problems with a lot of hospital trusts and they will have really difficult problems with GPs,” he said. “My best guess is that they will never get the majority of GPs from an organization like Palantir.”
John Puntis, co-chair of the Keep Our NHS Public campaign, said: “This appears to be another example of an extremely wasteful IT contract and a lack of public trust will make this unworkable. They should end the contract or not renew it. They should accept that the public are very concerned and if people think it is going to be accessed by a company like Palantir it will make it very difficult to use public data.”
A spokesperson for Palantir said: “Palantir software is helping deliver better public services in the UK. This includes delivering 99,000 more NHS operations and reducing hospital discharge delays by 15%, as well as helping the Royal Navy keep ships at sea longer and police tackling domestic violence.”
NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care have been approached for comment.
