The NHS And Westminster Links To US Spy And Tech Firm Palantir

Consecuttive Governments are selling out the NHS to US Healthcare models

 

 

On 6 August 2026, the Financial Times reported that at least half a dozen senior NHS leaders have documented career links to Palantir Technologies, the US data-analytics firm that now holds a £330 million contract to run the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP). The finding follows an earlier FT disclosure that NHS England granted external staff, including Palantir personnel, unrestricted access to identifiable patient data while working on the platform.

Together, the two stories have sharpened a question already circulating in Whitehall: whether a health system can hand its data infrastructure to a single vendor without also handing over a degree of institutional control.

The FT's report names three individuals explicitly. The remaining three of its "half a dozen" have not yet been published outside the paywalled original article, and no other outlet has independently confirmed their identities as of this writing.

The NHS-to-Palantir moves

Dr Indra Joshi led the formation of the NHS's artificial intelligence lab and directed AI strategy at NHSX before being recruited to Palantir in 2022 as director of health, research and AI. She remained in the role until 2024.

Paul Howells ran NHS Wales's National Data Programme from 2018 to 2021, then moved to Palantir as director of health and care, a post he held until 2025.

Matthew Swindells is the case that has drawn the most scrutiny. A former deputy chief executive of NHS England and one-time principal adviser to a prime minister, Swindells left the NHS in 2019 and within two months was working as an adviser to Palantir through Global Counsel, the consultancy founded by Peter Mandelson.

Crucially, he simultaneously served as joint chair of four acute NHS trusts in north-west London, including Chelsea and Westminster, from April 2022 until March 2026. Trust boards formally excluded him from Palantir-related decisions, but the FT reported that he privately urged colleagues and GPs to load more patient data onto Palantir-built platforms while being paid as an adviser to the company. He stood down from the trust chairmanship shortly after the FT's reporting became public. No rule is alleged to have been broken; the question raised by campaigners and transparency experts is whether the existing rules are adequate to manage the conflict.

A separate, wider investigation by The Nerve — an independent outlet founded by former Guardian and Observer journalists including Carole Cadwalladr — identified two further NHS-to-Palantir moves that sit alongside these cases, though it is not confirmed whether either forms part of the FT's specific "six":

• Stephen Childs, formerly commercial director in NHS England's Commercial Directorate, is now a special adviser at Palantir.
  
  
• Harjeet Dhaliwal, formerly deputy director of data services at NHS England, is now a deployment strategist at Palantir.

The Nerve's broader count put the total number of identified UK public-sector hires by Palantir at roughly 69 — 32 senior officials and a further 37 mid-ranking staff — with more than two-thirds drawn from just two departments: defence and health.

---

The Westminster links

The revolving door extends beyond the NHS into Parliament, chiefly the House of Lords rather than the Commons — no sitting MP has been identified in current reporting as directly employed or retained by Palantir.

Lord Mandelson (Peter Mandelson) ran the consultancy Global Counsel, which was still representing Palantir when he was appointed UK ambassador to Washington. In that role he introduced Keir Starmer to senior Palantir personnel during a trip to meet Donald Trump. Mandelson was later sacked as ambassador over separate, undisclosed links to Jeffrey Epstein.

Tom Watson, the former Labour deputy leader, sits on Palantir's advisory board and chairs the advisory council of Lodestone Communications, the lobbying firm Palantir retained in 2024.

Baroness Nicola Blackwood, a former chair of the Commons Science and Technology Select Committee — the body whose remit includes scrutiny of firms like Palantir — has consulted for the company through Mandelson's Global Counsel.

Lord Walney (John Woodcock), previously chair of Labour Friends of Israel and the government's independent adviser on political violence and disruption, also advises Palantir.

Isaac Levido, campaign director for the Conservative Party's 2019 and 2024 general election campaigns, co-founded a consultancy, Fleetwood Strategy, that was retained by Palantir from 2021 until at least 2024.

Other high-profile UK figures with formal Palantir ties, according to The Nerve, include Sir John Sawers (former head of MI6, who arranged a meeting between Palantir's CEO and the then-head of the Civil Service) and Laurence Lee (former second permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence and co-author of its AI strategy, now a senior geostrategy adviser to Palantir's chief executive).

Palantir's response

Asked about the Nerve findings, a Palantir spokesperson said the 32 names supplied to the investigation span roughly 15 years, a period in which thousands of people have worked for the company in the UK. The spokesperson said 14 of those named no longer work for or with Palantir, some having left as long as five years ago, and that six are military veterans whose inclusion in a "revolving door" narrative the company considers unfair given the standard expectation that veterans are supported into second careers. Palantir rejected the characterisation of a deliberate revolving-door hiring strategy. The Nerve noted there is no suggestion of criminal wrongdoing by any individual named in its reporting.

Why it matters: the FDP itself

The Federated Data Platform is the commercial centrepiece of Palantir's NHS relationship. Originally rolled out from an uncompeted emergency Covid contract in 2020, it has since expanded via the £330 million 2023 deal, with NHS England pushing trusts to onboard by 2028/29. NHS England's public position is that the platform is delivering measurable benefits — joining up patient care, speeding up cancer diagnosis, and enabling thousands of additional patients to be treated each month while saving money for local NHS organisations and taxpayers. That specific claim has been repeated near-verbatim to multiple outlets, including Digital Health News, Novara Media and independent tech journalist Rory Cellan-Jones, but none of them found a published dataset, audit or independent evaluation underpinning it when they inquired. NHS England's data chief, Ming Tang, has separately cited figures including roughly 110,000 additional operations and a 6.8% increase in cancer diagnoses within 28 days of referral as attributable to the platform, though the methodology behind these figures has not been independently verified in public reporting.

Reporting by Digital Health News in April 2026 also described a senior NHS official warning a data analyst against publicly questioning the platform's rollout, prompting criticism from the Good Law Project and other campaigners who argue staff should be free to raise patient-safety or governance concerns without fear of professional consequences.

Palantir's UK footprint has continued to widen alongside the NHS work: policing contracts from 2024, defence contracts from 2025, and a first UK financial-services contract with the Financial Conduct Authority awarded in March 2026.

Sources:

Compiled from reporting by the Financial Times, The Nerve, Digital Health News, the London Review of Books, Novara Media, Morning Star, openDemocracy and others. Last updated 7 August 2026.

• Financial Times, "At least half a dozen senior NHS leaders linked to Palantir" (6 August 2026) — original reporting, paywalled
• The Nerve, "The Palantir pipeline: how Peter Thiel's surveillance firm hired more than 30 senior UK officials" (24 April 2026)
• Digital Health News, "NHSE official warns staff over criticism of Palantir's FDP" (15 April 2026)
• Novara Media, "'Evil' Palantir Should Be Nowhere Near the NHS, Staff Say" (18 May 2026)
• London Review of Books, Peter Geoghegan and Lucas Amin, "'This looks absolutely rubbish': Palantir and the NHS"
• Rory Cellan-Jones, "Palantir in the NHS – is it actually any good?" (24 March 2026)
• openDemocracy, "Palantir is turning the NHS into a tool for mass surveillance" (17 June 2026)
• Morning Star, "Palantir recruits at least 32 public officials, including leaders of AI strategy from MoD and NHS"
• TechRadar Pro, "UK NHS chief champions Palantir's 'outstanding results' in England"