The NHS data watchdog has warned that patient distrust of the controversial US firm which runs the service’s data-sharing platform could ultimately impact patient care.
But Palantir’s UK boss, the former deputy leader of the Labour Party Tom Watson, has launched a staunch defence of the company’s role in the NHS, arguing the watchdog “ignores critical facts”.
In a letter to health minister James Frith, the National Data Guardian, Dr Nicola Byrne, said: “Public and professional trust should be given substantial weight when evaluating any supplier.”
She warned that “without sufficient trust, the system is unlikely to be adopted widely enough to fulfil its potential to improve health and care.”
System pulls together patient records
Palantir runs the NHS’s Federated Data Platform (FDP), a system that pulls together patient information from hospitals’ separate computer systems so staff can manage waiting lists, operating theatres and discharges in one place.
Hospitals use it to work out who should be operated on next, fill gaps in operating theatre lists, plan when patients can be sent home and organise vaccination programmes.
GP records were excluded when the contract was awarded, but NHS England has since added GP data to the platform, the Financial Times has reported.
More than four in five hospital and specialist trusts have signed up. Palantir says the platform has helped deliver 117,000 extra operations and cut delays in discharging long-stay patients by 14.3 per cent.
Dr Byrne’s letter, which refers to Palantir only as “the supplier”, warned that a recent rise in the number of patients opting out of NHS data sharing was “a concern”, and that it had coincided with media coverage of the platform and the company.
Opt-outs rose distinctly in May and June this year, after holding relatively stable through 2025.
Data remains under NHS control
Frith has told MPs that about 60,000 more people opted out between mid-May and mid-July. Opting out does not affect a patient’s own care, but removes their records from data used for research and planning.
Dr Byrne said assurances about technical, legal and contractual safeguards “have not assuaged public concerns about the supplier”, and pointed to worries over “national data sovereignty”.
Palantir and NHS England say patient data on the platform stays in the UK, remains under NHS control and cannot be used by the company for its own purposes.
But that has done little to assuage critics and the evidence attached to her letter sets out the scale of public unease.
A YouGov survey in July found 76 per cent of adults thought it unacceptable for US technology firms to handle NHS patients’ medical data.
Separate polling for the research group Understanding Patient Data found a third of people recalled recent coverage of Palantir. Of those, 41 per cent said it made them more likely to opt out or stay opted out, against 29 per cent who said it did not.
An analysis commissioned by the same group found 84 per cent of press coverage of Palantir and the platform between March 2025 and June 2026 was negative.
Why Palantir is controversial
The evidence says concern has grown since the contract was awarded, linked to the company’s “wider activities supporting military conflict and political activities overseas”.
It notes that coverage has linked NHS data to the use of Palantir’s technology by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Palantir has worked with ICE for years. Last year the agency awarded it a $30 million contract to build “ImmigrationOS”, a system designed to help locate people marked for deportation as part of President Trump’s crackdown.
The letter also quotes remarks made by Palantir’s co-founder, Peter Thiel, at the Oxford Union in January 2023, months before the company won the contract.
The NHS makes people sick,” he said, adding that Britons needed to get out of the “Stockholm syndrome.”
“In theory, you just rip the whole thing from the ground and start over,” he concluded.
Dr Byrne stopped short of recommending the contract be scrapped, saying she has “consistently supported the ambitions” of the programme.
Letter ‘ignores critical facts’
The intervention comes months before ministers must decide whether to extend the contract when its initial term ends next year. Two Commons select committees have urged them not to. The Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, is expected to take the final decision.
Palantir has stepped up its efforts to win over MPs and ministers, hiring the former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson last month as its UK senior vice-president. Lord Watson, who has advised the company since 2024, is on leave from the House of Lords. The company says he joined “to build things, not to open doors”.
In a statement to The i Paper about the National Data Guardian’s letter Watston said: “There are a number of issues with the considerations, and underlying evidence base, that the NDG has presented in her letter.
“It offers no scrutiny of how ideologically motivated campaign groups are eroding trust by sharing false information. It ignores critical facts, including that opt-outs have risen by 0.3 per cent in nearly three years since Palantir was awarded the contract – less than they rose in a single week during COVID. And it draws sweeping conclusions that are not supported by the scant evidence it relies on.
“There is a serious debate to be had about how we protect privacy and security as technology plays a greater role in patient care. Sadly the National Data Guardian appears to have been captured by campaign groups that have zero interest in building trust and every interest in stoking fear. As a result, this intervention fails to contribute to it.”
String of setbacks
The contract has suffered a string of setbacks. In August, NHS England apologised after admitting its paperwork had wrongly said only NHS staff could see identifiable patient data, when Palantir engineers had access, as revealed by the Financial Times.
The statistics watchdog has also examined how NHS England presented claims about the platform’s benefits, and more than 44,000 people have lodged legal objections to their records being processed on it.
The FDP was awarded to a Palantir-led consortium, including Accenture and PwC, in November 2023, in a deal worth up to £330 million over seven years.
The company faces a growing backlash elsewhere. In May, Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, blocked a £50 million deal for the Metropolitan Police to use Palantir’s artificial intelligence software to analyse criminal intelligence.
The NHS deal is the most prominent of a growing list of government contracts held by Palantir.
In December 2025 the Ministry of Defence directly awarded it a £240.6 million, three-year data analytics contract without competition.
Last month it emerged that the National Energy System Operator, which runs Britain’s electricity grid, had handed it a £21.2 million deal without competition. The Home Office has also given Palantir a £9 million contract to run firearms and explosives licensing, and at least six police forces use its software.