29 NHS trusts listed as Palantir beneficiaries say they barely use its platform

What “benefiting” means

NHS England’s website says 137 trusts are using the Federated Data Platform (FDP). But 29 trusts on the beneficiary list told Medact, the medical charity that submitted the requests, that they do not use the platform or its applications.

Their responses point to different stages of adoption:

The distinction is partly about what counts as use. NHS England says trusts can report benefits from a broad set of tools, including administrative analysis and data transfer, rather than patient-care applications. Some trusts that say they do not use FDP operationally may still use a limited capability to calculate treatment costs.

Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust, for example, said it did not currently use FDP in its operational work. NHS England considers it connected because its infrastructure is ready to transfer data, even though FDP applications are not actively in use.

The disputed evidence

NHS England has previously said trusts using the platform carried out 117,539 more operations over a year. This summer, it acknowledged it could not prove the platform caused that increase. The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) then began a review. Asked about claims that trusts were “benefiting” from FDP, the regulator said it would consider the issue as part of its work on complaints.

Palantir’s UK and Europe head, Louis Mosley, said ending the contract would mean “putting politics above patients” and accused critics of “Palantir derangement syndrome.” The company says its software helps improve care. It cites 117,000 more operations at trusts using the platform, a 14.3% reduction in delayed discharges for patients with long hospital stays, and a 5.6% increase in the number of people told within 28 days whether they have cancer.

The figures are not all the same: NHS England cited 117,539 additional operations, while Palantir’s statement cited 117,000. More fundamentally, NHS England has said it cannot establish that FDP caused the increase.

Pressure to end the deal

Science and Technology Committee chair Chi Onwurah said that if many NHS trusts see no benefit from FDP, the gap between Palantir’s reputation and the reality of its products deserves serious scrutiny. She urged the government to use an early termination clause in 2027 and hold an open competition to find a UK-owned, UK-based supplier for medical records. The Health Committee is also calling on ministers to end the Palantir deal.

Medact’s Dr Rhiannon Miryanan Osborne said NHS bodies should act in the interests of public trust and evidence-based medicine, rather than use “creative accounting” to justify a controversial contract. She questioned whether ministers were being misled if they relied on unreliable data.

NHS data and analytics leaders’ network chair Mark Farr said he was concerned that 29 trusts were listed as beneficiaries despite not using the tool. Many trusts that have implemented FDP do benefit from the nationally funded programme, he said, but results need to be reported accurately, transparently and in a way that can be checked.

I think the central weakness in the case for FDP is not that some trusts have yet to adopt it; a national rollout can be uneven. It is that “benefit” appears to cover everything from active use of applications to infrastructure ready for data transfer. Those are different claims, and combining them makes the headline number harder to interpret.

That distinction is especially important as Palantir campaigns against criticism of the contract. Last month it hired former Labour deputy leader and peer Tom Watson as a full-time senior lobbyist. This week Watson posted videos on X rebutting what he called myths about the company, including concerns that public services could become locked into its systems. He and Mosley have also written to MPs who criticised Palantir, counting how often they had spoken against the company. Labour MP Clive Lewis called the practice “very Big Brother.”

The question I would want answered is simple: how many trusts are actively using FDP applications in patient care, and what outcomes can be independently tied to that use? Until those figures are separated from basic connectivity and administrative tools, the contract’s supporters and critics are arguing over a number that may describe several different things.