This English County Rejects Palantir Deal

The UK government now faces a six-month deadline to decide whether to walk away from a contract valued at over $400 million between the National Health Service and US software firm Palantir. The central question emerging from critics: if one NHS region already operates successfully without Palantir, why should the rest of the country continue paying for it?

Back in 2023, Palantir was brought in to build a “federated data platform” (FDP) designed to digest and organize the vast, fragmented health information generated across the UK. Both Palantir and NHS leadership tout early wins, claiming the system has already reduced patient wait times, shortened hospital stays, and improved operating theatre utilization.

Yet the mood has shifted. As Palantir’s technology becomes increasingly associated with military operations and the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies, the NHS partnership has turned into a political lightning rod. Protests, online petitions, parliamentary scrutiny, and reports of internal resistance from NHS staff have all followed. Meanwhile, other European governments, wary of Washington’s unpredictable posture, are reconsidering their own ties to Palantir as part of a broader push to reduce reliance on American tech infrastructure.

One notable holdout is Greater Manchester. Its health care board has repeatedly refused to adopt the FDP, sticking instead with a locally built platform refined over nearly a decade. Officials there argue their own system is not only functionally superior but also enjoys far greater public confidence. Matt Hennessey, chief data and analytics officer at NHS Greater Manchester, puts it bluntly: a technically impressive system will fail to deliver real benefits if the people using it, and the patients relying on it, don’t trust it. He calls a full switch to the FDP “a retrograde step.”

That assertion, contested by Palantir and its supporters, has intensified a national reckoning. The government has until February to trigger an early termination clause in the contract, rather than letting the agreement run its course through 2031. The stakes are high, and the debate is far from settled.

To understand the controversy, it helps to look at the problem the FDP was meant to solve. For years, NHS staff have juggled a patchwork of digital tools, spreadsheets, paper records, and even whiteboards to manage patient information. When patients move between care settings, their records sometimes fail to follow them, occasionally with fatal consequences. Without a unified system for sharing data across providers, administrators have had to make funding and resource decisions based on incomplete, fragmented information. Palantir’s platform was designed to close those gaps.

The FDP began rolling out in early 2024. It operates on two levels: a national repository of health data intended to spotlight systemic care deficiencies, and regional databases that allow local teams to build their own analytical tools, such as waitlist management or discharge planning. All components share the same underlying infrastructure, which theoretically means a tool developed in one part of the country can be easily replicated elsewhere.

Tom Bartlett, an independent IT consultant who previously led the national FDP rollout as deputy director of data engineering at NHS England, sees this as a major advantage. He emphasizes the ability to “lift and shift” solutions across regions and notes that the platform provides a foundation for artificial intelligence applications to work across the system.

Access to the FDP is granted to two types of NHS entities: hospital trusts, which manage local care delivery, and integrated care boards (ICBs), which handle regional planning and commissioning. Their data needs differ, but both share the same overarching objective: better patient outcomes. Whether the national experiment continues, or Greater Manchester’s resistance sets a precedent, is now a decision of significant consequence, not just for the NHS but for the UK’s broader stance on tech sovereignty.