Tory Minister takes £5,000 donation from Palantir’s UK boss

We can reveal that Louis Mosley, Palantir’s Executive President for UK and Europe, gave Housing Minister, Lee Rowley, £5,000 for his constituency association on 2nd January, according to the latest Parliamentary records. This donation – made by Mosley in an individual capacity – followed the highly controversial award to Palantir of a £330m contract with NHS England in November to run the Federated Data Platform.

Palantir also won a £4.5m contract to supply its Foundry software to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) just weeks after Rowley joined the department as a junior Minister in September 2022. This contract was awarded through a framework agreement.

Last week, NHS England confirmed that it would investigate whether the Palantir violated the terms of its contract to run the Federated Data Platform. This followed the tech giant covertly launching an influencer campaign, which targeted Good Law Project, without seeking the prior approval of NHS England.

Good Law Project had previously revealed that a leaked briefing and emails from the campaign showed that Palantir used Tory-linked PR agency, Topham Guerin and marketing agency, Disrupt, to approach social media influencers to ask them what they would like to be paid to take part in a smear campaign against Good Law Project. Influencers were asked not to mention Palantir in their content. 

Good Law Project’s Executive Director, Jo Maugham said: “This is an ugly but now familiar tale of a company winning valuable public contracts, contracts they ought never to have won, with matched donations flowing to the Conservative Party.”