TL;DR
Over WhatsApp, Palantir asked a health minister to look at bringing GP records into the NHS federated data platform (FDP) it runs, the Guardian reported on 9 November. GP data sits outside the firm’s £330m NHS England contract. The messages, released to the campaign group Foxglove through a freedom of information request, run from July 2025 into March 2026, and the push itself came in February.
What the messages show
The exchanges appear to be between Louis Mosley, who heads Palantir in the UK, and Zubir Ahmed, then a health minister. The health department blacked out the executive’s name before release; Palantir has not disputed that it was Mosley.
Palantir argued that “the logic of joining up primary and secondary [care] data is unarguable” and called its Foundry software “ideal” for the task, citing faster GP access and better care for frail patients. It also acknowledged the politics: the previous government had ruled GP data out when it announced the FDP, so ministers would need to “get ahead of” critics. In the messages and a briefing, it flagged likely opposition from doctors and from critics such as the Green leader, Zack Polanski, and Your Party.
In 2023, the Conservative government said: “GP data will not be part of the national platform.”
The reaction
Dr Tom Dolphin, who chairs the BMA council, warned of “scope creep” that could “undermine patient trust and threaten the doctor-patient relationship”. Marc Farr, who leads a network of NHS chief data officers, said Palantir seemed to be going beyond what ministers and NHS leaders had said: that GP records were out of scope and would need a change in the law. Foxglove’s Donald Campbell called it lobbying “to hoover up yet more of the British public’s sensitive personal data”.
Palantir said it has always made the case that sharing data helps the NHS, that organisations keep “full local control” of their data, and that rollout decisions are for the government. The health department declined to comment.
What it means
The disclosure lands while the contract’s future is under review. The Guardian notes that Yvette Cooper told Parliament last week there was “a huge long-term benefit to using the NHS to develop UK sovereign AI”, and that the contract’s next end point is 2029. We covered questions over the platform’s take-up earlier this month.
In our view, the episode sharpens the question any replacement supplier will face. Palantir’s case rests on joining primary and secondary care data, and the BMA warns that the GP record holds identifiable personal data. That question will not go away with a change of supplier, so the rules on GP data are better settled in public than through private channels to ministers.