29 NHS trusts listed as Palantir beneficiaries say they don't use the platform

Twenty-nine hospital trusts that NHS England publicly lists as "realising benefits" from Palantir's £330m federated data platform have told freedom of information requests they are not using the system at all. That gap sits at the center of the biggest AI procurement fight in British healthcare — and the statistics watchdog is now circling.

One senior health official called the discrepancy "very misleading." Health Secretary Yvette Cooper faces mounting calls from MPs and campaigners to cancel the US firm's contract, which began in 2024 and runs the flagship government AI system meant to connect scattered medical files, speed up hospital discharges and improve surgery scheduling.

What did the FOI responses actually say?

The Guardian obtained the picture through FOI responses gathered by Medact, a medical charity campaigning to eject Palantir from the NHS. NHS England's website states that 137 trusts are "live" with the federated data platform, or FDP. But among the trusts the agency describes as "realising benefits," 29 replied that they were either not using the system or any of its applications.

The trusts' own words are blunt:

• Epsom and St Helier: "not using FDP at the moment"
• Kent and Medway: "has been focused on other priorities … the FDP is not currently live"
• Mersey Care: "not yet gone live with the FDP"
• Nottingham University Hospitals: "no implementation timeline has been agreed"
• University Hospitals of North Midlands: "FDP is not live. We do not intend to roll it out in the future."

That last sentence is the sharpest. A trust recorded as benefiting from the platform says it never plans to switch it on.

Why the numbers are under investigation

This is not the first time NHS England's data on Palantir has drawn scrutiny. The agency claims 117,539 more operations were carried out by trusts using the FDP over a year. This summer it conceded it could not prove cause and effect. The Office for Statistics Regulation ran an investigation, and asked about the "realising benefits" claim, the watchdog said it will now be "taking this forward under our casework function."

Chi Onwurah, chair of the Commons science and technology committee, said: "If many NHS trusts don't see the value of the FDP, serious questions need to be asked about whether the hype surrounding Palantir's products matches reality." She wants the government to activate the 2027 break clause in Palantir's contract and launch an open competition for a UK-owned supplier to handle patient records. The Commons health select committee is also calling on ministers to pull the deal.

Medact's spokesperson, Dr Rhiannon Mihranian Osborne, went further: "Our NHS institutions are meant to work in the interests of public trust and evidence-based healthcare, not use creative accounting to justify a deeply controversial contract. There is no good reason for the government to continue this failing project. We now have to ask, if ministers are using these flawed claims to make their decision, are they being misled?"

How does NHS England explain the gap?

NHS England insisted that nearly 140 trusts "have now reported benefits from the wide range of tools available on the platform, helping staff join up and improve care for patients, and work more efficiently."

The agency has previously acknowledged that its list of trusts reporting benefits includes those using the tools for back-office data analysis and submission rather than patient care. It is understood that trusts denying FDP use may still touch a small slice of its functionality to help calculate treatment costs. Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust said it is "not currently operationally using the FDP" — yet NHS England records it as "live" because infrastructure is in place "to support data submission, rather than active operational use of FDP apps."

Marc Farr, chair of the NHS Chief Data and Analytics Officers Network, said: "I am concerned to hear that there are 29 trusts reported as receiving benefits but when asked are not actually using the tool. It is great that a number of trusts that have adopted the FDP are benefiting from this nationally funded programme, but it is crucial for public support … that benefits are reported accurately, transparently and in a way that can be properly verified."

Palantir fights back

Palantir's UK and Europe chief executive, Louis Mosley, said ending the contract would be "putting politics above patients" and accused critics of "Palantir Derangement Syndrome." A Palantir spokesperson pointed to the results the company says its software delivers: "Palantir software is helping to deliver better care, with trusts using it recording 117,000 additional operations, a 14.3% reduction in discharge delays for long stay patients and a 5.6% improvement in the number of people finding out whether or not they have cancer within 28 days."

The lobbying effort has escalated. Last month Palantir hired Labour's former deputy leader and House of Lords member Tom Watson as a full-time senior lobbyist. Watson has been posting videos on X aiming to debunk "myths" about the company, including concerns that public services will become "locked in" to its systems. He rebutted criticism from Green party leader Zack Polanski, who said it was "beyond ridiculous" that Lord Watson was a life peer.

Watson and Mosley have also been writing directly to critical MPs — letters that count the number of times each MP has spoken out against the company. One recipient, Labour's Clive Lewis, described the tactic as "very Big Brother."

Why this matters beyond the NHS

The controversy lands at a moment when governments everywhere are betting on AI to fix creaking public services. Palantir's other clients include the Israeli military and Donald Trump's homeland security crackdown. Its billionaire founder, Peter Thiel, has questioned democracy, said tech companies can "unilaterally change the world" and called technology an "incredible alternative to politics" — baggage that makes a £330m NHS data contract politically radioactive for Labour.

The stakes are also evidentiary. If the flagship deal's headline numbers — 117,539 extra operations, trusts "realising benefits" — cannot survive verification, the case for renewing it in 2027 weakens sharply, and the template it sets for AI procurement across the public sector comes under question. With the OSR now examining the claims under its casework function, and parliamentary committees lining up against the deal, the next test is whether ministers can defend numbers that the hospitals named in them do not recognize as their own.