No Palantir in the NHS! Campaign Toolkit

Photo: Talia Woodin

What is the campaign?
Who we are
What is Palantir
Palantir’s FDP in the NHS
How to get involved
Further resources and campaign tactics
FDP Glossary
Further reading

Quick links to campaign resources

What is the campaign?

No Palantir in the NHS is a grassroots, community campaign made up of workers, communities and patients. We are fighting to cancel Palantir’s contract with NHS England through organising where we live and where we work. We use a variety of tactics including advocacy, boycotts, direct action, political education, and public campaigns. This toolkit is written by members of Health Workers for a Free Palestine and Medact.

The wider movement to cancel Palantir’s NHS contract includes organisations such as Just Treatment, The Good Law Project, Amnesty UK, Foxglove and a large number of grassroots community groups.

Who we are

As health workers we must stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, and refuse to allow our healthcare systems to be weaponised against them. We reject the capitalist belief that health is an individual issue, but recognise health to be political and structural. We know that the Israeli occupation targets the health of Palestinians as a key part of their strategy, and we know it is vital for us to resist.

While we set up the campaign in response to the call from Palestinian health unions to cut ties between our healthcare institutions and the ongoing genocide, our opposition to the Palantir contract is multi-faceted. We organise from a lens of health justice – the belief that everyone has the right to health and dignity, and we must end systems of oppression to do so. We’re also fighting the contract because we stand in solidarity with migrants against deportations, against state surveillance, and against the privatisation and outsourcing of the NHS.

What is Palantir?

Palantir is a software and AI company. They specialise in warfare, policing, surveillance and immigration enforcement. They are complicit in multiple human rights violations, including:

Palantir supports and enables state and colonial violence across the world. Their contract with the NHS is a continuation of the privatisation of our health services. The NHS cannot continue to allow a military spy tech company to benefit from public money and our health data.

You can read more about Palantir as a company and problems with their NHS contract in our briefing document ‘Concerns Regarding Palantir Technologies in NHS Data Systems’.

Read the briefing

Palantir’s FDP in the NHS

In 2023, the government gave a £330 million NHS contract to Palantir to create the Federated Data Platform (FDP). This aims to act as a cross-NHS data warehousing and analytics platform, ‘sucking up’ data from every level of the NHS for the purposes of planning and analytics. NHS England wants all NHS trusts to use the FDP, and each trust will use it slightly differently. Palantir has worked with different parts of the NHS, including acute hospitals (trusts) and Integrated Care Boards (ICBS) to make ‘products’ that are used for different things, including to plan patient discharges, manage waiting lists, and cancer treatment. You may also see products referred to as apps and dashboards.

There is a clear need to improve NHS data analytics systems. However, putting patient data and NHS funding in the hands of Palantir, a company complicit in genocide and human rights abuses, is not. The Palantir contract includes a ‘break clause’ in February 2027 at which point NHS England could exit the contract. The next few months are therefore crucial for pressuring local, regional and national NHS bodies to support the use of the break clause.

Key messages

Palantir is not an acceptable partner for the NHS: NHS England is paying £330 million to a company complicit in genocide to look after our health data – Palantir can use this contract data to improve their software and potentially strengthen the technology they use for war crimes and human rights abuses.
Palantir’s FDP will destroy patient trust and increase state surveillance: as patients, we don’t get the choice to opt out of the FDP holding our data, where it’s vulnerable to state and corporate surveillance. This contract increases the risk of state abuse of our health data.
The Palantir contract means more outsourcing and privatisation of the NHS: over the years, we’ve watched the government destroy the NHS through selling it off in parts – instead of putting an unethical private corporation in charge of our health data, the NHS should develop trusted and in-house public data systems.

You can read more about these key messages, and the details of the data security issues, in the briefing and in the roll-out analysis.

Key demands to NHS England and the Department of Health

Cancel the contract with Palantir by exercising the upcoming break clause in February 2027. This means the contract would not be renewed to continue beyond the 3 year mark.
End the outsourcing, privatisation and asset stripping of the NHS
End all contracts with companies complicit in the Israeli occupation (Our campaign focuses on Palantir but there are other BDS targets in the health system, including but not limited to big tech companies like Oracle and Infosys)

Key demands to local NHS Trusts and ICBs

Not to use the Federated Data Platform or any other software provided by Palantir and to clearly communicate this decision to patients
To report to NHS England the public’s concerns with Palantir’s Federated Data Platform
To advocate for the use of the February 2027 break clause in the contract

How to get involved

There are plenty of ways to get involved in the ‘No Palantir in the NHS’ campaign.

The campaign takes a structure of groups working at both national and local levels. The success of Palantir’s contract with the NHS depends on the extent to which Palantir’s software is adopted at a local level. Local campaign groups are key to resisting the adoption of Palantir’s Federated Data Platform by NHS Trusts and Integrated Care Boards (ICBs).

Find a campaign group near you:

Birmingham
Bristol
Brighton
Cambridge
Durham
East London
Humber and North Yorkshire
Leicester
Lincolnshire
Liverpool
Manchester
Merseyside
Mid and South Essex
Newcastle
North London and North West London
Nottinghamshire
Oxford and Berkshire
South and South West London
South Yorkshire
West Yorkshire

If you are interested in joining one of the existing local groups, contact us and we will connect you to the local campaign.

Get involved as a data, digital, or tech worker in the NHS

Email [email protected] and ask to join their group made up of data, digital and tech workers in the NHS. Provide your expertise and knowledge to the campaign. You could be working in a trust, ICB, CSU, or NHS England. They will need to know a bit about who you are to allow you to join, but will endeavour to preserve your anonymity as much as possible after you join. They understand the extra risks involved for you.

You can read their open letter here.

Consider setting up a campaign group

If your region is not mentioned in the list above, we can support you in setting up a local campaign group. You may already know a group of people who are interested in starting a group together. You may want to contact other local groups who are involved in campaigning on similar issues, such as Palestinian solidarity, migrant rights in the NHS, data privacy and surveillance, NHS privatisation, or all of the above. If you want to set up a group, contact us and we can help you get started.

Steps to starting a campaign group

Contact us. We can help you set up a group by providing guidance or resources.
Find people in your area who want to get Palantir out of the NHS. This can be anyone from health workers, to patients, community groups, and more.
Start planning. Below you will find more information about what is happening in your area relating to Palantir’s involvement in the NHS. Using this data, you can begin to meet and plan how to oppose Palantir.
Once you have set up a group, we can connect you to a network of similar groups across the country for more ideas and support.

Get in touch

Further resources and campaign tactics

Below you will find resources to help you take action. This includes tools to find out if the NHS in your area is using Palantir’s FDP, as well as leaflets and documents to use as part of your campaigning.

Check if your trust or ICB is using the FDP

Use our tool to check if your local NHS trust or ICB is using the FDP. We obtain this information through publicly available Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. You can use this tool to check which ICB you are in. Please note that the information in the tool is being updated in July-August, so make sure to check back if the response for your trust/ICB is from before July 2026.

NHS England also has a public list of trusts and ICBs that are stated to be live with the FDP or have signed up to adopt the FDP. While this shows the official statistics, we recommend reading the responses to FOI requests in our tool as they better reflect what the area is currently doing. A trust or ICB which is listed as ‘live’ by NHS England may not actively be using the FDP.

NHS England is publishing statistics about usage of the FDP, and claims that trusts are receiving significant benefits. We submitted evidence to parliament challenging this, which you can read here. You can also read a BMJ piece which scrutinised two particular benefit claims here.

Briefing action pack for local groups

This action pack contains the key information from the ‘Concerns Regarding Palantir Technologies and NHS Data Systems’ briefing, the webinar associated with its launch, and a guide to how you can use it to organise in your local area. It includes suggestions for a ‘Hackathon’ event, which could kickstart your campaign locally.

Petitions and email tools by partner campaign groups

Good Law Project and Just Treatment Tool
This online tool, developed by Good Law Project and Just Treatment, is for NHS patients, staff, and the public to complain about the FDP to their local NHS organisations.

Foxglove Letter to Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, James Murray
Use this tool to write a letter to James Murray demanding that he triggers the break clause of Palantir’s contract with the NHS.

They also have a petition to Andy Burnham demanding the NHS contract is cancelled.

Not with my NHS Data
The website Not With My NHS Data has been set up to help make formal complaints about information governance and data privacy within Palantir’s FDP, you can use it here.

Local campaign tactics

There are multiple actions you can take as a group or individual in your local area. Below is a non-exhaustive list of possible actions that you can explore. All of these have been tried and tested by other local campaign groups so get in touch if you want support in making these actions happen.

Build coalitions
Map your allies locally to identify groups you have existing relationships with and/or could build relationships with in support of the campaign. Example groups could include trade unions, Keep Our NHS Public, Palestinian solidarity groups, Amnesty UK, migrant justice and anti-raids groups, anti-surveillance and digital rights groups. Collectively think about how you might best use your respective strengths and resources to strategically target your local trust or ICB.

Hold public meetings and workshops
Create a space that brings together workers, patients, and community groups together to learn more about Palantir’s NHS contract and take action. Some local groups have hosted workshops that combined banner making, writing emails together and then doing a demonstration outside their local hospital. You can find more ideas for running public workshops and ‘hackathons’ in our local action pack here.

Write open letters to NHS trust or ICB Executives
Publish an open letter addressed to Trust and ICB Executives for health workers, patients, and community groups to sign, demanding that they pause and scrap the rollout of the FDP. Check out examples of open letters to executives.

Organise workers
Find out which workers in the hospital are using the FDP, and what they think of it. You may want to organise your colleagues, or support your local hospital workers, to raise complaints internally together. You could use your local hospital unions such as the BMA, Unite and UNISON to help do this, asking them to raise it at official meetings, back open letters, and issue statements. In some hospitals, workers are refusing to use the FDP on conscientious grounds and asking to be redeployed to other duties which don’t require using it. The BMA has advised members not to use the non-direct care elements of the FDP.

Submit questions to NHS Trust or ICB Board meetings
Most Trusts and ICBs welcome questions from the public at their Board of Executives meetings. These are an opportunity to: find out more about the status of the FDP rollout locally, raise awareness of the campaign with executives who may not be aware of Palantir, potentially secure a meeting with an executive to discuss the campaign further, or use their response for media publicity depending on what they say.

Engage in local council health committee meetings
Whilst councils do not have the authority to stop the rollout, they can make powerful statements in opposition of Palantir’s involvement in the NHS. Most council health committees welcome questions from the public. These can be used to: raise awareness of the campaign, ask that committees scrutinise a local NHS decision to adopt the FDP, and attract media attention for the local campaign For example, Sheffield City Council recently passed a resolution calling upon local NHS institutions to pause any further integration with Palantir’s FDP and for the UK government to exercise the contract’s break clause. We have also developed a letter that you can send to councillors encouraging them to submit a similar motion to council. The letter can be found here, which includes a link to the resolution that recently passed in Sheffield City Council.

Hold demonstrations outside hospitals
Demonstrations can be used to raise public awareness. They are an opportunity to educate the public or health workers as they enter the hospital. Additionally, they can be scheduled to occur the same day as Trust/ICB Board of Executives meetings. This puts political pressure on boards as it makes them aware of negative public opinion towards Palantir and potentially towards boards if they appear complicit with Palantir.

Ask GPs to check their Data Sharing Agreements (DSAs)
ICBs are being asked to check DSAs that they have with GP practices and if it is not specified how data can be used, by who, or where it can be stored, then ICBs can extract data from GPs for the FDP without informing them, you can read more here. Therefore, consider contacting local GP practices to inform them of this and ask that they check and amend their DSAs to protect patient data. We have a draft letter to your GP, which you can find here.

Pass trade union motions
Submit a motion to your local trade unions asking that they stand in opposition of Palantir’s involvement in the NHS. Check out the template trade union motion developed by Doctors in Unite.

Engage local MPs
Consider writing to your local MPs or attending their surgeries to discuss concerns about Palantir’s involvement in the NHS. There is cross-party support for the campaign’s goal of getting Palantir out of the NHS and the contract’s break clause is a topic that can be focussed on. Template letter to MPs coming soon!

Leaflets and posters
Below you can find a number of extra resources that you can use for your campaign including leaflets and posters. The campaign in Homerton also did a mass postcard campaign, where local residents wrote postcards to the hospital management.

Download leaflet A

Download leaflet B

Download leaflet C

Download leaflet D

Glossary of FDP terms

Discussions about the FDP often include technical and complicated language related to data systems. This explainer and glossary breaks down some of the terms used when talking about the FDP.

FDP – Federated Data Platform, the national platform procured by NHS England and provided by Palantir.

FDP instance – The version of the FDP available to a local, regional or national NHS institution. For example, your local hospital (trust) may have a local instance that looks similar to that used by another trust, but data on one instance cannot be accessed by another unless explicitly shared.

FDP apps – There are many apps (also known as products and dashboards) available within the FDP which serve different functions, including visualising national level data and some analytics capabilities. At the local level, a variety of workers may be asked to use FDP products, from clinical to admin staff. You can read more about the products here. For acute hospitals and ICBS, the relevant apps are:

Referral to Treatment (RTT) validation tool
Inpatient Care co-ordination solution (Inpatient CSS) tool
Outpatient Care co-ordination solution (outpatient CSS) tool
Patient Led Validation (PLV) tool
Discharge planning (OPTICA)
Cancer 360
Crisis Response
Clinic Management and Room Booking (CMRB)
Shared Patient Tracking List (SPTL)
System Co-ordination Centre
Strategic Commissioning Tool

Pseudonymisation – This is a process by which identifiable data is meant to become anonymous. This may include removing names, and subsisting an NHS number for a random number. We believe this process within the FDP is deeply insufficient, as outlined in the briefing.

Privacy Enhancing Technology – Tech provided by the company IQVIA, to carry out pseudonymisation of data in the national FDP instance.

NDIT – National Data Integrated Tenant. This is a national ‘instance’ of the FDP which contains identifiable data, i.e. it has not yet undergone pseudonymisation. This dataset was subject to a huge public controversy after it was revealed that Palantir engineers were to be given ‘unlimited’ access to the data it holds. You can read more about this in the rollout analysis report.

Data controller – NHS England and trusts often come back to activists saying that the NHS is the data controller, and that Palantir is the data processor. This is technically correct, Palantir doesn’t own the data, the NHS (the data controller) does. However, as the data processor they still hold significant power over what happens with that data, particularly how it is utilised and how securely held it is. They can also benefit from holding the data without owning or viewing it, as outlined in the briefing. The fact that Palantir is the data processor does not mitigate the data security concerns about the FDP.