No Palantir drop in with Martin Wrigley MP – building a Westminster caucus to use our collective health data for our collective good!
Three years ago, US spy tech corporation Palantir was awarded the £330m contract for the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP). As Foxglove has said for over six years, there should be no place in the NHS for Palantir.
We are now just under a year away from the FDP contract end date: February 15, 2027. This is an important moment – we have a real chance to cut Palantir out of its biggest NHS contract.
One of the key steps in making that happen is building a network of MPs and members of the House of Lords in the UK parliament who can push the Government to change course, drop Palantir and demand a future for NHS data that is transparent, trustworthy and backed by patients and health workers.
That’s why, supported by groups representing doctors, patients and pensioners, we co-hosted a drop-in session in Westminster with Martin Wrigley MP on Monday, inviting MPs, peers and their staff to hear our briefings on Palantir and share information on why we believe this matters so much.
We were joined on Monday by our amazing partners on this work: patient advocacy campaigners Just Treatment, the Doctors Association UK and the British Medical Association. The National Pensioners Convention also supported the event and helped write the briefing that we presented to MPs.
The drop-in had a great reception, with MPs and peers attending from the Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru. We were encouraged by the passion and strong concerns about Palantir in the NHS expressed by parliamentarians on behalf of their constituents – with several telling us they had decided to attend after receiving many emails from Foxglove supporters (thank you to everyone who sent an email to their MP asking them to attend!).
This is just the beginning. We have a long way to go to build a caucus of lawmakers in the UK parliament large enough to help convince the government that Palantir’s contract for the FDP must end.
We’re now working with MPs to investigate the mechanics of the end of the FDP contract and how the formal process of the Government dropping Palantir from this contract would work. We’ll be writing to Foxglove supporters soon on the next steps – hit the button below to stay informed.
For now, he’s a picture of Foxglove’s Tim and Tom with Martin Wrigley, after Monday’s drop in had come to an end.
