UK lawmakers push to end Palantir's £330M NHS contract, citing dependency on US AI firm

UK committee urges break clause on Palantir's £330M NHS data contract

A UK parliamentary committee has called Palantir's role in the public sector an "unacceptable point of weakness" and urged the government to break its NHS contract with the American company.The Science, Innovation and Technology Committee singled out Palantir as the technology provider it found most concerning, arguing that the UK was at risk of becoming overly dependent on a single foreign firm for critical health infrastructure. Its recommendation is concrete: the government should exercise a break clause in the contract to avoid vendor lock-in.The contract at the centre of it is the NHS Federated Data Platform, an AI-enabled system designed to link health data across services in England and support clinical decision-making. It was awarded in 2023 for seven years, under the previous Conservative government, placing Palantir at the centre of how the NHS in England moves and uses patient data. The committee's objection is structural rather than a specific allegation of wrongdoing. The concern is concentration: that handing the connective tissue of NHS data to one company, and an American one with roots in defence and intelligence work, creates a dependency that is hard to unwind and risky to rely on. Once a platform like the FDP is embedded across services, switching away becomes expensive and disruptive, which is precisely the lock-in the break clause was meant to guard against. That fear is not new. The Register reported in April that the UK was already weighing the break clause, and Palantir's NHS involvement has drawn criticism from patient groups and MPs since the contract was signed, much of it over how much identifiable patient data the company's systems can reach. The committee's report sharpens a long-running unease into a formal recommendation to act. Palantir has consistently defended its public-sector work, arguing that its software improves outcomes and that it operates under the contracting authority's control rather than its own. The company can point out that the FDP was procured competitively and that no rival has been shown to do the job better. None of that resolves the committee's actual worry, which is about dependence rather than performance: even a system that works as intended raises the question of what happens when one supplier becomes too embedded to replace. The decision now sits with the government, and it is not a simple one. Triggering a break clause would mean unwinding a platform already woven into NHS operations, with its own cost and disruption, and the committee's recommendation is exactly that, a recommendation, not a binding instruction. Ministers have to weigh the political pressure to reduce reliance on Palantir against the practical mess of replacing it. The episode lands inside a wider European argument about technological sovereignty, where reliance on US providers for critical infrastructure, from cloud to AI to health data, has become a recurring anxiety. Palantir is the visible test case because health data is the most sensitive category and the NHS the most charged institution. What MPs have done is name the dependency and ask the government to decide whether it is willing to pay to undo it. That decision is still to come.

UK urged to end contract with US AI-firm Palantir

British lawmakers called Wednesday for the government to end a contract between the country's National Health Service and AI giant Palantir, warning of an over-reliance on US data providers. The British MPs called on the government to use a break clause next year to end the £330-million ($443 million) contract signed in 2023. British lawmakers called Wednesday for the government to end a contract between the country's National Health Service and AI giant Palantir, warning of an over-reliance on US data providers. "Palantir's increasing presence across the public sector represents an unacceptable point of weakness," the parliamentary Commons Science, Innovation and Technology committee said in a report. Their conclusions were "not ideologically motivated or driven by concerns about the quality of their products," it added. But "reliance on a small number of US-based providers represents a clear vulnerability" which could leave public services "at the mercy of foreign actors," the report said. Palantir was co-founded by Peter Thiel, a right-wing Silicon Valley billionaire close to US President Donald Trump, with support from America's CIA overseas spying service. It has notably worked with the US government to identify undocumented immigrants or targets in the US-Israel war on Iran. Campaign groups have warned the company's products pose risks related to mass surveillance, infringements on individual freedoms and data protection. In recent years, Palantir has pushed to further penetrate the European market. The British MPs called on the government to use a break clause next year to end the £330-million ($443 million) contract signed in 2023. "The UK can and should be aiming for technology sovereignty in critical parts of our public sector and supporting domestic alternatives through smarter procurement," committee chairwoman Chi Onwurah said. The committee proposed that the government should either look for an alternative UK provider or develop its own in-house system. The NHS says on its website that the contract contains multiple measures "to mitigate the risk of lock-in to the supplier". Palantir's UK head, Louis Mosley, said: "The committee has decided to put the politics of the playground before public services, arguing for the rejection of technology that is proven to deliver more NHS operations, less crime and better military capability." According to the Guardian daily, committee member Martin Wrigley said US authorities could evoke a US law to force a tech company to disclose information. This could apply to a Palantir deal with the UK's financial crime-busting watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority, which is under trial, Wrigley said. But Palantir denied the report, saying due to tight encryption "it is not technically possible for Palantir to respond to such a request without the FCA's direct involvement". Meanwhile, a spokesman for the London mayor's office told AFP that a two-year, £50-million contract with Palantir to work with the Metropolitan police had been blocked. "The Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) were not satisfied that the process followed by the Met adequately ensured or demonstrated value for money," the spokesman said. The Met police said it regretted the decision as Palantir's "technology has shown it can save much more than it costs and that it can improve performance."