Since 2023, Palantir has secured more than £500m in contracts with public bodies in the UK, including a £330m NHS contract to deliver its Federated Data Platform and a £240m agreement with the Ministry of Defence.
These deals, which follow services initially provided for a nominal fee of £1 during the Covid-19 pandemic, have placed the company at the core of Britain’s public services.
Indeed, Palantir’s data aggregation capabilities have become an integral part of the government’s broader strategy to digitise the public sector and transform how we interact with public services.
I’m supportive of the government’s vision to transform the UK into a ‘truly digital state.’ I was an engineer for many years before entering parliament, and saw first-hand how technology, when well used, can transform lives, drive productivity and improve the delivery of essential services.
However, this goal is being undermined by an overreliance on a small number of global technology providers, including Palantir. This dependence in areas of our critical national infrastructure exposes a fundamental weakness: while it exists, the government cannot set or deliver a sovereign digital agenda for the UK, determined by our own interests and values.
Palantir isn’t irreplaceable. It’s one of a number of firms offering the data analysis ‘middleware’ used by our public bodies. There are also a growing number of open-source alternatives to capabilities provided by other major tech companies like Microsoft and AWS, whose productivity and cloud services dominate our public digital infrastructure.
Over-reliance on a small number of providers limits the government’s freedom to drive a better price on behalf of taxpayers, stifles competition and risks creating a single point of failure for malicious actors to target.
Vendor lock-in shouldn’t be viewed as inevitable. The government can and must act now to take back control. It should begin by exercising the 2027 break clause in the NHS contract with Palantir and set out a clear plan to move away from dependence on a single provider.
It should also invest in alternatives closer to home. The UK has no shortage of innovative, high-quality companies that could help develop our digital infrastructure. What they currently lack is sustained government support. By using public procurement to back domestic firms, or building in-house capabilities, the government could foster a more innovative, sovereign and resilient public sector.
This is also a matter of national security. In an increasingly unstable global environment, reliance on foreign providers – particularly companies who have demonstrated their lack of alignment with UK values – for vital infrastructure is an unjustifiable risk. Decisions taken overseas could have direct consequences for the functioning of UK public services.
There are signs that the government is beginning to recognise this, with ministers being encouraged to prioritise domestic firms in procurement decisions. This process should be formalised and accelerated.
The government needs to set out a clear definition of what technology sovereignty means for the public sector. It should state where we need sovereign capabilities, with a clear plan to deliver them and to ensure a diverse, competitive supplier landscape.
None of this will be easy, but the alternative is worse. Without domestic capability the UK can never become a sovereign digital state. The government will struggle to deliver on its ambitions, squandering a crucial opportunity to transform public services and undermining public confidence in the state’s capacity to deliver.
Dame Chi Onwurah is MP for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West and chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee. Read the committee's report, Rewiring the state: Delivering digital government here