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Exclusive: WhatsApp messages show firm pressuring Zubir Ahmed MP to help bring sensitive data into its platform
Palantir lobbied a health minister to consider extending its AI technology into GP records, stretching its reach into the NHS in a way doctors fear could undermine trust with patients.
The US company, co-founded by the Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel, used a direct WhatsApp channel to argue that “the logic of joining up primary and secondary [care] data is unarguable” and said its software was “ideal” for the job. The push came in February this year despite GP data being expressly ruled out of scope of Palantir’s existing £330m contract with NHS England to run its federated data platform (FDP), which it says has helped cut surgery waiting times and discharge delays.
The messages – which were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Foxglove, a tech equity campaign group, and shared with the Guardian – appear to be between Palantir’s UK boss, Louis Mosley, and the former health minister Zubir Ahmed. They span several months from July 2025 to March 2026.
In the messages and a briefing document, Palantir urged Ahmed to “get out ahead of” likely “political” opposition from doctors and vocal critics of Palantir, such as the Green party leader, Zack Polanski, and Your Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. The firm also told Ahmed: “The FDP is already delivering very strong results – but will deliver even more benefits faster with the right ministerial sponsorship.”
Groups representing doctors and patients, including the British Medical Association, have opposed the integration of GP data into Palantir’s FDP, arguing there is a lack of trust in the company, which also works for the Israeli military and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). When Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government announced the deal with Palantir three years ago, it said: “GP data will not be part of the national platform.”
The lobbying emerges after it was reported last week that ministers were unlikely to end Palantir’s NHS data management contract imminently, defying campaigners and two House of Commons committees that wanted the company to be forced out as soon as spring. The Financial Times reporting, which suggested the Palantir contract will be extended, came amid concerns that removing the firm’s AI technology would be disruptive without an alternative lined up. The health secretary, Yvette Cooper, last week told parliament the review was ongoing, but said there was “a huge long-term benefit to using the NHS to develop UK sovereign AI” – a sign that the government may seek a UK replacement for Palantir when the contract reaches its next end point in 2029. Bloomberg also reported that Tom Watson, a Labour peer hired as a full-time lobbyist by Palantir in September, recently wrote to Cooper urging her to keep the contract going, saying: “I want to ensure that Palantir UK rises to meet the government’s new social-value tests and helps build Britain’s sovereign technological capability.”
The WhatsApp logs released under the FoI Act show Palantir telling Ahmed that the benefits to the health system of applying its software – known as Foundry – to GP data could include “faster access to GPs … more effective and targeted management of frail patients, and more effective preventative care”. It also said Palantir’s software platform would “maintain local control of data”.
The Palantir executive’s name is redacted in the documents released by the department of health, but Palantir did not deny it was Mosley. In one message, the minister praises a performance on a BBC1 Sunday politics programme, just after Mosley had appeared.
“Great work [on] Kuenssberg btw,” Ahmed said.
The Palantir executive advised the minister that “the politics [of using GP data] is not straightforward – the previous government ruled GP data out of scope when announcing the FDP. So, as this moves forward, it will be one to get ahead of and explain, otherwise the opponents described above will make hay with it.”
Donald Campbell, director of advocacy at Foxglove, said the WhatsApps showed Palantir “lobbying to hoover up yet more of the British public’s sensitive personal data”.
“It is appalling to see Palantir pressuring the minister to bring GP records into its platform, despite pledges from the government in 2023 that this would not happen,” Campbell said.
The correspondence “shows they knew just how sensitive this was” and it was “telling [that] they made this argument privately, via privileged access to the government”, he added.
Tom Dolphin, chair of the BMA council, raised concerns about “scope creep” with Palantir potentially accessing identifiable personal data in the GP record that could “undermine patient trust and threaten the doctor-patient relationship”.
“Patients must be able to seek care without worrying which operators might have access to duplicates of their personal information,” he said.
Marc Farr, chair of the NHS Chief Data and Analytical Officers Network, said: “Palantir appears to be bidding to stretch the scope of its work for NHS England in a way that goes beyond statements from ministers and NHS leaders that GP data was not in the scope of the FDP contract and would require legislative change … As two separate select committees have noted, public trust and transparency is essential to us being able to realise the fantastic opportunities that technology and data offer.”
Palantir said: “We’ve long argued that data sharing can improve the NHS, for patients and taxpayers, and that our software helps different NHS organisations to do that, while ensuring they maintain full local control over their data. We’ve also always been clear that it is for the government to decide how they roll the software out. These exchanges reflect both of those points”.
The Department of Health and Social Care declined to comment.