NHS England CEO Sir Jim Mackey plans to tell Palantir to clear future claims about its Federated Data Platform's benefits with his team – although he admits that could be difficult to enforce.
Speaking to the Health and Social Care Committee this week, Labour MP Ben Coleman noted that NHS England had cautioned against attributing improvements directly to the platform, but said newly appointed Palantir UK senior vice president Tom Watson "is making claims that [Palantir] is making a difference, and that it's due to Palantir that changes are taking place."
Responding, Mackey said he would write to Palantir and "tell them that they have to share with us and clear with us any benefits claimed in the future."
But getting Palantir to comply could be another matter. "They should share them with us, but contractually, it looks hard to enforce," Mackey said.
The planned letter follows repeated questions about the evidence NHS England and Palantir have used to promote the Federated Data Platform (FDP). NHS England awarded the £330 million contract to a Palantir-led consortium in November 2023 to help improve planning and efficiency.
In July, campaign group Foxglove wrote to the UK health minister questioning figures used in Parliament to justify the contract. The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) also began examining the evidence.
NHS England had said that as of June, 139 trusts used the platform, with 137 reporting benefits. It said an Inpatient Care Coordination Solution tool based on the FDP had helped hospitals perform procedures on an additional 111,589 patients. However, a Freedom of Information request later found that nearly a third of NHS trusts using Palantir's health data platform were performing fewer patient procedures than before it went live.
Later that month, the OSR said NHS England had accepted that it needed to communicate its claims about FDP performance more clearly.
The regulator noted that NHS England had published on its website a caveat saying that it could not "draw conclusions about cause and effect as other variables have not been controlled for."
Last month, Watson, the former deputy leader of the Labour Party, sought to rebut what he described as misinformation about the FDP, repeating the statement that 137 trusts were already reporting benefits without mentioning the caveats.
In a statement on X, Watson said the OSR had pointed out that there had not yet been a study on the FDP that controls for other factors like staffing level changes or industrial action. "That's a fair note of caution."
In a prepared video, he said Northampton General Hospital, University Hospitals of Derby and Burton, and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital had all produced figures showing they are benefiting from using the platform.
"Can we prove that every one of those procedures happened because of our software? No. But does that mean we should ignore what the hospitals are telling us? Of course not," he said.
In February 2026, NHS England awarded a contract to Imperial College Projects to independently evaluate the FDP. The findings are not expected until after ministers decide whether to extend the contract, which currently ends in March 2027. ®
