Andy Burnham faces many big decisions, but one of the biggest early tests is what to do about Palantir, the US defence and surveillance tech behemoth described as the world's "scariest company". Palantir holds a swathe of British public contracts, including a controversial £330m deal with the NHS. The science, innovation and technology committee has urged the government to ditch Palantir, citing a "clear mismatch with UK values".
Palantir's Federated Data Platform: claims versus reality
Peter Geoghegan and Lucas Amin, from the investigative site Democracy for Sale, spent a year probing Palantir's UK operations. They spoke to NHS whistleblowers and Palantir staff, obtained confidential documents, and unearthed new data. Their findings, published in the London Review of Books, raise serious questions about the efficacy of Palantir's technology, the approach of NHS senior leaders, and the lobbying that helped a Silicon Valley startup expand quickly in Britain.
At the heart of Palantir's British operation is the Federated Data Platform (FDP), built on the company's Foundry software. Sold as a generational opportunity to knit disparate data from hospitals, doctors, and pharmacists into a coherent whole, NHS England says almost two-thirds of NHS trusts are "live" on Palantir's software since its launch in 2024. Politicians and NHS leaders have hailed the FDP as a success.
But internal usage data released under the Freedom of Information Act tells a different story. Dozens of trusts that NHS England says are using the FDP appear not to have logged into a single FDP app in the past year. The Cancer 360 tool, which Keir Starmer lauded as "groundbreaking new technology" that would "slash treatment delays across the NHS", was used by just six out of about 200 trusts in the nine months since it launched. Palantir told the investigators that the firm is merely a software provider: "How that software is used is controlled by the NHS trusts who use it."
Clinicians' reluctance and vendor lock-in risks
Clinicians' reluctance around using Palantir's software is more practical than ideological. Many trusts say the FDP is slower and less effective than their existing technology. NHS analysts report that it can take five minutes or more to run a basic query. As NHS Greater Manchester's chief data officer told the health select committee: "We can match anything that the Palantir FDP can do." Palantir says the FDP cannot be compared "like for like" with other systems because of the "additional security" embedded in it.
In private briefings obtained by the investigators, senior NHS leaders complained that Palantir's software has a "poor user experience". Kanthan Theivendran, an orthopaedic surgeon at a trust in Birmingham, stopped using Palantir's flagship waiting-list app because he couldn't edit the data: "It's just a waste of time," he said.
The true cost of Palantir's FDP is much greater than £330m. Individual trusts have been given as much as £3m each to encourage implementation. Consultancy giant KPMG was awarded an £8.5m contract to push the FDP across the health service. Foundry is a proprietary product, raising concerns about "vendor lock in". Some NHS data analysts told the investigators that all their work on the FDP would be lost if they no longer had access to Palantir's platform. This is particularly concerning given that Palantir works for Donald Trump's ICE, the Israel Defense Forces, and heralds AI-fuelled global warfare.
Political access and threadbare regulations
Palantir's integration into the British state was facilitated by paid-for political access and threadbare regulations. In 2018, Palantir hired Peter Mandelson's lobbying firm Global Counsel to position it as "a respectable partner to the British government". Global Counsel organised dinners for Palantir with policymakers and politicians but did not have to declare their client on official disclosures, as policy briefings are not classified as paid advocacy. As a former Global Counsel employee who worked on the Palantir contract said: "You really have to fuck up to have to register somebody." Palantir was one of Global Counsel's biggest clients, on a monthly retainer worth more than £30,000, with an internal code name: Project Onion. When Starmer visited Washington DC with Mandelson last year, he also met Palantir CEO Alex Karp and UK boss Louis Mosley. No 10 has repeatedly refused to say what they discussed.
Mandelson's spectacular fall took Global Counsel with it, but Palantir's political access remains. Palantir now has contracts with everyone from the Financial Conduct Authority to the Atomic Weapons Establishment. Last year, the Ministry of Defence signed a strategic partnership with Karp, agreeing to spend up to £750m on the firm's defence technology over the next five years.
Is Palantir value for money?
Petitions against Palantir contracts have attracted about 230,000 signatures, and protests outside its London offices are frequent. But a crucial question often goes unasked: is Palantir value for money for Britain? The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government says it is now saving millions of pounds per year after ditching Palantir's "confusing to use" software and switching to an in-house system. The UK Statistics Authority is investigating NHS England's use of data in promoting the benefits of Palantir's software. Even the Ministry of Defence has admitted that it is becoming "locked in" to Palantir's software. Two separate select committees have called on the government to exercise a "break clause" when the FDP comes up for renewal next year.
As Camilla Cavendish wrote in the Financial Times, "what matters is what works" – and it's not working. Burnham has a break clause and every reason to use it. He should not waste the chance.
