UK Government Under Pressure to Terminate $400 Million Palantir Deal

The U.K. government is under growing pressure to abandon a more than $400 million NHS contract with Palantir, as lawmakers seize on Greater Manchester’s refusal to adopt the company’s platform.

Ministers have six months to decide whether to trigger an early break clause rather than let the deal run until 2031.

Manchester Becomes the Test Case

Greater Manchester is the only integrated care board in England to have repeatedly rejected Palantir’s federated data platform, or FDP.

Instead, it has kept its locally developed Analytics and Data Science Platform, which the board says better meets its needs.

“If we were to fully adopt the FDP … it would be a retrograde step,” said Matt Hennessey, chief data and analytics officer at NHS Greater Manchester.

The board says its platform is more flexible and benefits from stronger public trust.

MPs Push for a Break

A bipartisan group of U.K. politicians said in June that reliance on Palantir represented an “unacceptable point of weakness” and urged the government to seek domestic alternatives.

A separate parliamentary committee echoed those concerns the following month.

“(Palantir) is evidently not the only show in town,” wrote MP Layla Moran, who chairs the committee.

The political scrutiny has intensified as Palantir’s technology has been deployed in theaters of war and in the U.S. administration’s immigration crackdown.

Palantir Pushes Back

Palantir disputes claims that Greater Manchester’s system offers a viable national alternative.

The company says thousands of NHS staff already use the FDP and argues that the system is designed to connect data across hospitals, care boards and national NHS bodies.

NHS figures show 139 of roughly 200 trusts are live with Palantir technology, while 35 of England’s 36 integrated care boards are actively using it.

February Decision Looms

Supporters warn that breaking the contract could reverse years of implementation.

Critics argue the greater risk is locking the NHS into dependence on a controversial foreign supplier.

Greater Manchester has sharpened that debate: if one major health authority believes it can operate without Palantir, politicians are asking why the rest of the NHS cannot do the same.