UK committee calls for ending £330m Palantir NHS contract

A parliamentary committee has called on the British government to terminate a major National Health Service contract with the U.S. data analytics firm Palantir, citing national security risks and a fundamental mismatch with British values. The recommendation centers on a 330 million pound, seven-year contract awarded in 2023 for the NHS Federated Data Platform, a system designed to integrate health data across England to aid clinical decisions.

In a report published Wednesday, the cross-party Science, Innovation and Technology Committee described the UK's growing dependence on Palantir as an "unacceptable point of weakness." The committee urged ministers to exercise a contractual break clause available in 2027 to avoid long-term "vendor lock-in," where switching to an alternative provider becomes prohibitively difficult and expensive. It recommended the government either develop an in-house replacement or seek a UK-based alternative.

The committee's primary concern is structural, focusing on the concentration of sensitive health data infrastructure with a single foreign company. The report argues that Britain's digital modernization ambitions could be derailed by a commercial or...