Episode 2 - Your Data at Pound-Shop Prices (The £1 Palantir Contract)

About this episode

A £1 pandemic contract becomes a £330m NHS data deal and gives Palantir a foothold inside Britain’s health system. In episode two of The Shadow Contract, we rewind to the moment Palantir first entered the NHS during the Covid pandemic – through a seemingly generous £1 contract to help manage emergency health data. What looked like a short-term solution quickly grew into something far bigger: a £330m contract to build the NHS Federated Data Platform, one of the largest data projects in NHS history. Through testimony from NHS analysts, researchers and campaigners, we explore how an emergency response became a long-term foothold. Along the way we uncover concerns about transparency, the role of lobbying networks and the growing influence of private tech companies inside public healthcare. At stake is more than a procurement process. The NHS holds one of the richest health datasets in the world – a resource capable of transforming medicine. But if public trust collapses, that dataset could be fatally weakened. And that raises the question: who should control the infrastructure behind it? The Shadow Contract is produced by the Good Law Project. Learn more about Good Law Pr