A second parliamentary committee has called for the NHS to abandon its £330 million contract with Palantir, adding to mounting political pressure ahead of a 2027 break clause. With incoming Labour leadership reportedly reviewing the government’s wider AI strategy, the federated data platform’s future now looks more uncertain than at any point since it was awarded in 2023.

Cross-Party MPs Renew Calls To Scrap NHS Data Platform Deal With Palantir

The federated data platform has never been an easy sell to a sceptical NHS workforce, and this week that scepticism found its way into a second Westminster committee report. MPs on the health and social care select committee have now joined the science and technology committee in urging the government to walk away from Palantir’s contract to unify and analyse NHS data. 

Ministers confirmed a full review of the £330 million deal back in June, with a decision now due before the break clause falls in early 2027. For an ICS or ICB leader trying to plan digital infrastructure investment beyond that date, the platform’s future has rarely looked less secure.

A Second Committee, A Harder Line

Where last month’s science and technology committee report focused on structural risk, calling reliance on Palantir an unacceptable point of weakness, the health and social care select committee has framed its objection around public confidence. 

Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrat MP who chairs the committee, put it plainly, the government’s arguments for sticking with the platform have unravelled, and preparations for an alternative should begin now. Both committees point to the same mechanism, the 2027 break clause, as the practical route out.

The Workforce Objection

What distinguishes this dispute from a typical procurement row is that opposition has come from inside the NHS’s own data and technology workforce. Up to 117 staff signed a letter warning that patient privacy protections were inadequate and that continued use of the platform risked eroding the completeness of NHS data. 

Greater Manchester’s Integrated Care Board has continued to decline to join the platform altogether, judging its existing data capability superior, a stance that has become something of a practical test case for whether the FDP can deliver the national coverage it was procured to achieve.

Palantir’s Defence, By The Numbers

Palantir has not been passive in the face of this pressure. A company spokesperson pointed to concrete figures, including 110,000 additional operations delivered and a 15 per cent reduction in discharge delays, as evidence the platform is doing exactly what it was procured to do. Louis Mosley, Palantir’s UK and Europe chief, has argued that critics have chosen ideology over patient safety. Whatever the merits of that framing, it has done little to slow the accumulation of committee reports.

The Burnham Factor

The political weather around this contract has shifted sharply since Andy Burnham became prime minister following Keir Starmer’s resignation, an exit that came after nearly two years in which the Palantir deal became something of an albatross around the government’s digital health record. Burnham is reviewing the government’s artificial intelligence strategy, with the NHS contract understood to be part of that review, and his own record as mayor of Greater Manchester, where the combined authority issued no contracts to Palantir at all, gives the sector a reasonable steer on his instincts.

That transition is already shaping how Westminster scrutinises NHS technology more broadly. When the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee closed its inquiry into NHS innovation adoption on 7 July, the Palantir contract was cited as the clearest existing example of the fragmentation the inquiry exists to interrogate. That same fragmentation concern runs through NHS England’s recently confirmed £10 billion technology settlement, where a Single Patient Record has been announced without any indication of whether it will extend beyond the NHS’s own boundary into social care systems. For a sector that has watched data infrastructure decisions swing on political preference before, the prospect of a new prime minister carries real weight here, regardless of what any single committee recommends.

What The Sector Should Watch

The immediate question for care providers and ICS leaders is not whether Palantir will be dropped tomorrow, but whether the government uses the 2027 break clause at all, and what replaces the platform if it does. Unison has argued that the NHS needs to retain ownership and control over patient data systems it describes as critical infrastructure, a position that points towards an in-house alternative rather than a straight swap to a different vendor. Either path involves years of transition, and providers currently building workflows around the federated data platform should treat that dependency as provisional rather than settled.

What happens next depends less on committee reports, however forceful, than on political appetite inside a government still finding its footing after a leadership transition. The break clause gives it an exit if it wants one. Whether it takes it is a decision that will shape NHS data infrastructure for a decade.