The Government must decide by December 2026 whether to keep NHS England’s £330m Federated Data Platform contract with Palantir. The break clause is exercisable in February 2027. The Health and Social Care Committee has already recommended termination, over 100 NHS data professionals have signed an open letter saying alternatives already exist, and the incoming Prime Minister ran Greater Manchester’s health data for nine years without a single Palantir contract.
A July 2026 investigation by Peter Geoghegan and Lucas Amin (Democracy for Sale / London Review of Books) found the platform barely works: 52 of the 139 trusts recorded as live used none of its applications in a year, the flagship Cancer 360 tool ran in just six trusts, and the UK Statistics Authority is investigating NHS England’s claims about its benefits.
It also revealed how the contract was bought: Palantir paid Peter Mandelson’s lobbying firm more than £30,000 a month from 2018, undeclared as a client until 2022, codename ‘Project Onion’. Three senior NHS England data officials later joined Palantir, a company that signed a ‘battle tech’ partnership with Israel’s Ministry of Defense during the genocide in Gaza and powers US deportation operations.