The implication that patient data is being “sent to Palantir” is misleading; the data remains in UK systems, but NHS England (not the wider UK-wide NHS) has granted Palantir contractors “unlimited” admin access to view raw, identifiable patient records directly. This creates a dangerous loophole where external US staff can bypass standard, granular privacy checks simply because obtaining individual permissions was deemed “too inconvenient.”

This is a fundamentally poor decision. Granting sweeping administrative privileges to a foreign intelligence-linked firm is a lazy shortcut that prioritises engineering ease over patient safety. By dismantling strict access controls to save time, NHS England has unnecessarily exposed millions of patients to risk, undermining the very principle of knowing exactly who accesses sensitive health data.