Europe Reconsiders Palantir as UK Lawmakers Question £330 Million NHS Deal

Today’s Focus

European governments are pulling back from Palantir Technologies, the US data analytics firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, according to reporting this week from Euronews, Reuters and Bloomberg.

In the UK, a cross-party group of lawmakers released a report describing Britain’s dependence on Palantir for sensitive public data as an “unacceptable weakness,” Reuters reported. The report focuses on a £330 million ($420 million) contract awarded in 2023 to build the NHS Federated Data Platform, which links patient records across hospitals in England.

Bloomberg reported that members of Parliament from Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats signed onto the findings, which urge ministers to review whether a single US-headquartered vendor should control the architecture of NHS data flows.

The Guardian’s editorial board this week argued that NHS patient information should not be treated as raw material for private analytics companies, and called for tighter rules on how the data is used and stored.

Euronews reported that the British concerns are part of a broader European pattern. Germany’s federal police agency has faced legal challenges over its use of Palantir’s Gotham software, and courts in two German states have restricted how police can deploy the tool. Norway’s parliament has debated dropping a smaller Palantir contract, and the Dutch government has paused expansion of an analytics pilot, according to Euronews.

Palantir has defended the NHS deal, telling The Times that the federated platform is already speeding up hospital discharges and cancer referrals, and that pulling out would set back NHS modernization by years.

The UK Department of Health and Social Care has not announced any change to the contract, which runs through 2030 with options to extend.

The Debate

Supporters argue

Backers of the NHS contract say Palantir’s software is already producing measurable results inside hospitals. The Times reported that trusts using the Federated Data Platform have cut waiting lists and improved theatre scheduling, and its editorial board argued that “real NHS delivery means sticking with Palantir” rather than restarting a procurement that took years.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has previously defended the deal, telling Parliament that the NHS needs modern data tools to clear backlogs and that no British vendor offered a comparable, ready-to-deploy system at the scale required, according to Bloomberg.

Palantir UK head Louis Mosley told Bloomberg the company stores data on UK-based servers under NHS control, and that clinicians, not Palantir, decide who sees what.

Supporters in the US foreign policy community, including writers at the Washington Examiner and National Review cited by Euronews, argue that allied governments depending on American technology is a feature of the transatlantic relationship, not a vulnerability, and that swapping Palantir for a Chinese or untested European alternative would carry larger risks.

Critics argue

Critics say the issue is not whether the software works but who controls the underlying infrastructure. The cross-party report cited by Reuters argued that concentrating NHS data flows in a single US vendor exposes Britain to political risk if Washington changes export rules or sanctions policy.

The Guardian’s editorial board wrote that patient records are “not raw material for big tech” and that the NHS should build sovereign data capacity rather than rent it. Privacy group Foxglove, quoted in Bloomberg’s coverage, has filed a legal challenge arguing the contract was awarded without adequate public consultation.

In Germany, the Society for Civil Rights (GFF) successfully challenged police use of Palantir’s Gotham platform at the Federal Constitutional Court in 2023, and lawyers for the group told Euronews the rulings should prompt other European governments to reconsider similar deployments.

Labour MP Rachael Maskell told Bloomberg that Parliament was never given a full picture of what data Palantir would touch.

What the experts say

The Ada Lovelace Institute, an independent research body on data and AI, published analysis in 2024 finding that the NHS Federated Data Platform procurement scored low on public transparency compared with similar European health data projects, and recommended stronger independent oversight regardless of which vendor was chosen.

Researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute have noted that “digital sovereignty” concerns in Europe have grown since 2022, driven by uncertainty over US export controls and the CLOUD Act, which can compel US companies to hand over data held abroad to American authorities.

A 2024 study by the European Centre for Digital Rights found that 17 of 27 EU member states have either restricted or reviewed contracts with non-European data analytics firms in the past three years.

Brookings fellow Cameron Kerry, a former general counsel at the US Commerce Department, has written that the CLOUD Act’s reach is narrower than European critics often claim, but that the perception itself shapes procurement politics across the continent.

By the Numbers

£330 million: value of Palantir’s seven-year NHS Federated Data Platform contract, according to Bloomberg.

2023: year the UK awarded the contract, with the platform now live in dozens of NHS trusts, per Reuters.

17 of 27: EU member states that have restricted or reviewed contracts with non-European analytics firms since 2022, according to the European Centre for Digital Rights.

2: German states where courts have limited police use of Palantir’s Gotham software following challenges by the GFF, per Euronews.

2030: year the current NHS contract runs through, with extension options, according to Bloomberg.

$420 million: approximate US-dollar value of the NHS deal at current exchange rates, per Reuters.

2019: year Palantir went public on the New York Stock Exchange, with European public-sector revenue now a growing share of its book, per Bloomberg.