Palantir lobbied UK minister to extend NHS software to GP records
GP data was ruled out of Palantir’s £330 million NHS England contract, and doctors’ groups say bringing it in could undermine patient trust.
Summary
In brief
- Palantir pressed UK minister Zubir Ahmed in February to consider adding GP records
- GP data is excluded from Palantir’s £330 million NHS England data platform contract
- Campaign group Foxglove obtained the messages under the Freedom of Information Act
Palantir lobbied a UK health minister in February to consider extending its software into GP records, according to WhatsApp messages published by the Guardian on Monday, although that data is excluded from its NHS contract.
The disclosure comes as the government reviews Palantir’s £330 million contract to run NHS England’s federated data platform, and doctors’ groups say adding GP records could undermine patients’ trust in their doctors.
Foxglove, a tech equity campaign group, obtained the messages under the Freedom of Information Act. They span July 2025 to March 2026 and appear to be between Palantir’s UK head, Louis Mosley, and Zubir Ahmed, then a health minister. The Department of Health and Social Care redacted the executive’s name, and Palantir did not deny it was Mosley.
In the messages, Palantir argued that “the logic of joining up primary and secondary [care] data is unarguable” and called its Foundry software “ideal” for the job. It told Ahmed the platform “will deliver even more benefits faster with the right ministerial sponsorship” and urged him to “get out ahead of” likely opposition from doctors and critics such as Green party leader Zack Polanski.
Palantir said it had “long argued that data sharing can improve the NHS” and that “it is for the government to decide how they roll the software out.” The Department of Health and Social Care declined to comment to the Guardian.
Tom Dolphin, chair of the British Medical Association council, warned of “scope creep” into identifiable patient data. Donald Campbell, director of advocacy at Foxglove, said the messages showed Palantir “lobbying to hoover up yet more of the British public’s sensitive personal data.”
The Financial Times reported earlier in November that ministers were unlikely to end the contract imminently, although two House of Commons committees wanted Palantir out as soon as spring. Health Secretary Yvette Cooper told parliament the review was ongoing; the contract reaches its next end point in 2029. Bloomberg reported that Tom Watson, a Labour peer Palantir hired as a lobbyist in September, wrote to Cooper urging her to keep it.
Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government announced the Palantir deal in 2023, saying “GP data will not be part of the national platform.” On November 2, the Guardian reported that 29 hospital trusts the NHS said had benefited from the platform were not using all or most of it.