‘Absolutely rubbish’: Investigation reveals Palantir’s ‘slow and clunky’ tech

A Democracy for Sale investigation, published in the LRB, has revealed cronyism and failure at the heart of Palantir’s £330m contract with the NHS, with a senior data analyst branding the spy-tech firm’s software “absolutely rubbish”.

An internal briefing, seen by Democracy for Sale, calls Palantir’s Federated Data Platform (FDP) “slow and clunky”, while one source who uses the software every day told the newsletter that they often wait 20 minutes for a dashboard to load, only for the system to crash.

In May 2024, NHS England held a meeting at Palantir’s offices with 200 health service data analysts and engineers. When Palantir gave demonstrations of the software, one source told the newsletter they thought “it just doesn’t look very good”, while a senior data analyst compared it to tools already developed in-house: “We’ve done all this already. This looks absolutely rubbish.”

The NHS boasts that 139 trusts are already live on the system, making up 64% of the total. But according to figures obtained by Democracy for Sale, 52 of these trusts haven’t used a single FDP app during the 12 months leading up to June. Four of the apps were used by ten trusts or fewer. In the seven months following its launch in September, the Cancer 360 app – which Keir Starmer hailed as “groundbreaking new technology” that would “slash treatment delays” – has been used by only six trusts.

The investigation reveals how Palantir managed to embed this lousy software into the heart of our healthcare system. Sources told Democracy for Sale that the company paid Peter Mandelson’s lobbying firm, Global Counsel, more than £30,000 a month to put executives in front of British politicians. The scheme was kept under wraps at Global Counsel, referred to by the code name Project Onion, but Mandelson took a personal interest in one of his biggest clients. The disgraced former ambassador briefed Palantir executives and went to dinners his company arranged where Palantir could meet with policymakers and politicians. By the time the NHS opened the bidding to run the FDP, Palantir was in pole position. As one former Global Counsel employee told Democracy for Sale, “It’s all about setting the terms of the tender.”

NHS England told Democracy for Sale that the procurement process was “rigorous, competitive, fair and transparent” and was “in line with public contract regulations, where any eligible supplier could respond”. They didn’t address the newsletter’s questions about the FDP, but a spokesman for Palantir said it couldn’t be compared “like for like” with other systems because of “additional security” embedded in the platform.

For Duncan McCann, data and tech lead at Good Law Project, Palantir’s role in the UK “isn’t just a tech failure, it’s a profound threat”.

“As citizens, we depend on data systems we can trust,” McCann said, “whether that’s for our health, our safety or our defence. The ministers who have fallen for Palantir’s sales pitch and signed up to its dodgy software have put that trust at risk. It’s time to invest in alternatives and stop the spy-tech firm’s public sector takeover.”

More than 80,000 Good Law Project supporters have told their local NHS trusts to stop using Palantir. And parliament’s science and health select committees have urged the government to exercise the break clause and cancel the £330m contract in February 2027.

We can’t let our NHS become permanently locked into a proprietary system that doesn’t work for patients or doctors. It’s time to end the secrecy, drop Palantir, and build data technology rooted in public trust and values.