Palantir paid a Labour peer for sixteen months of votes. Then his register went blank.

On 18 September Tom Watson announced he was joining Palantir UK as senior vice president. Louis Mosley, who runs Palantir in Britain, welcomed him with a joke.

Conspiracy theorists, you’ll need to update your org charts. Sorry.

Louis Mosley on X, 18 September 2026

Here is the org chart. If you would rather skip it and act, the campaign is here.

The payroll

Watson has been on Palantir’s payroll since November 2024. He registered it in the House of Lords as a paid seat on Palantir UK’s Public Services Advisory Board. Two months before that he joined the advisory council of Lodestone, a lobbying firm. Palantir hired Lodestone the same year.

The lobbying industry’s own code, the PRCA Public Affairs Code, says a firm “must not employ any Member of Parliament or Member of the House of Lords to conduct public affairs in any capacity”. Tortoise put that to Lodestone in March 2025. Lodestone did not answer.

The votes

Between April 2024 and 19 March 2026 Watson voted 240 times in the Lords. Palantir was paying him for the last sixteen months of that. Thirty of those votes were on the Crime and Policing Bill, in February and March 2026, while Palantir was pushing the Met for a £50m policing contract. Five were on the Data (Use and Access) Bill, which changed the rules on how public bodies, the NHS included, share data. Eight were on the Border Security Bill. Palantir builds the deportation software for ICE.

None of this breaks the Lords Code of Conduct. A peer can vote on anything he likes while a company pays him, as long as the payment is on the register. He only has to declare it when he speaks, and when Watson spoke on the data bill in May 2025 he declared UK Music and his book royalties. Not Palantir.

Then the register went blank

On 26 March 2026 Watson took leave of absence from the Lords. He wrote in May that it was for prostate cancer treatment, and nobody should wish him anything but a full recovery. But look at what Palantir did with it. The company’s statement says Watson has taken a leave of absence from the House of Lords while working for it. Mosley’s defence on X was three words.

He can’t vote.

Louis Mosley on X, as reported by GB News

Palantir is selling a medical leave as an ethics safeguard.

And the House helped. The Code of Conduct does not apply to a member on leave of absence. On 14 May his entire register of interests was replaced with one line: “On leave of absence; exempt from registration.” The public record of what Palantir pays a Labour peer was switched off at the exact moment he took the job. He keeps the title. He keeps the Labour whip. He keeps the peerage. He can end the leave with three months’ notice and walk back in.

What he is for

Watson has told us. Palantir’s £330m NHS contract has a break clause in February 2027, and the Department of Health decides by December whether to use it. The Health and Social Care Committee says use it. The Science and Technology Committee says use it. More than a hundred NHS data specialists wrote to the Health Secretary and said use it. The Times reported that Watson was hired to see off the MPs pushing for exactly that.

We have challenges. Some criticism is propaganda. Some raises legitimate questions about large technology companies and sovereign control. Both require answers.

Tom Watson on X, 18 September 2026

His job, he says, is “to correct false information”.

Not the first purchase

In April The Nerve counted 32 senior UK officials and 37 mid-ranking staff hired out of the Ministry of Defence, the NHS and Whitehall. Four peers have advised the company: Peter Mandelson, Nicola Blackwood, Lord Walney and now Watson. In September 2025 Palantir hired the MoD’s director of industrial strategy. Three months later the MoD handed Palantir a £240.6m contract with no competition. Palantir’s UK revenue last year was £427m.

One more line on the org chart. Max Mosley gave Tom Watson £540,000 between 2015 and 2017 to run his office as Labour’s deputy leader. Max Mosley was Louis Mosley’s uncle. Watson now reports to the nephew.

This is a company that signed a strategic partnership with Israel’s Ministry of Defence in January 2024, three months into the genocide in Gaza, and whose software still runs deportations for ICE. It has bought a Labour peer to keep its hands on 50 million NHS records, and the rules of the House of Lords have made sure you cannot see the receipt.

Where the power is

The Greens wrote to the Lord Speaker asking for Watson to be expelled. The Lord Speaker cannot expel anyone. A complaint to the Lords Commissioner would die on day one, because the Code does not reach a peer on leave. So the ask has to go where the power is. Lord Kennedy of Southwark, Labour’s chief whip in the Lords, can take the whip away today. The Conduct Committee can close the loophole that lets a peer on leave work for a government contractor with no register. And the Health Secretary can publish every contact between Palantir and his department between now and the break-clause decision, so that when Watson makes his calls, we can count them.

That is what our campaign asks for. Send it.