Top official recuses herself from NHS Palantir contract decision after business links

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The top civil servant at the Department of Health has recused herself from any decision to extend Palantir’s contract with the NHS, after MPs raised concerns over a potential conflict of interest related to her previous consulting work.

Samantha Jones, the department’s permanent secretary, was an adviser to one of Palantir’s partners at the time it was bidding for a £330mn contract to develop the NHS’s Federated Data Platform (FDP), awarded in November 2023. 

A spokesperson has said Jones did not work on the Palantir contract.

The US tech company’s role inside the NHS has become an increasing source of controversy, given its ties to the US defence sector and its chief executive Alex Karp’s vocal support for President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

A growing number of MPs, NHS staff and medical trade unions have urged the health service to find an alternative ahead of a decision to extend the contract next spring.  

Several MPs told the FT this week that Jones should no longer be part of any decision to extend or end Palantir’s NHS contract when it comes up for renewal next year. In response, health officials confirmed she has now recused herself from any decision-making to remove any perception of a conflict.

Jones advised Carnall Farrar — a healthcare consultancy that is part of a consortium with Palantir that bid for, and now runs, the controversial data-sharing contract — between September 2023 and February 2024. Carnall Farrar has said Jones did not work on the Palantir contract and instead provided “leadership advisory”. 

Jones last month apologised after being reprimanded by the Civil Service Commission for failing to apply for clearance to take on the work at a time when she was also a non-executive director at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

In total, Jones worked for four different healthcare companies without applying for prior permission from the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba), in what she accepted was a breach of Whitehall rules. 

Ben Coleman, a Labour MP on the House of Commons health and social care select committee, had said that he hoped Jones would “wish to recuse herself from the decision on extending Palantir’s contract”, given the Civil Service Commission’s reprimands.

Stella Creasy, a Labour MP, said: “Parliament needs to be able to trust that the Permanent Secretary at the DHSC . . . has no conflicts of interest in relation to any NHS contract with a private firm, particularly one which has attracted such significant public controversy.”

Emails seen by the FT show that Jones helped Global Counsel, the lobbying firm co-founded by Lord Peter Mandelson, arrange a healthcare roundtable last year while DHSC permanent secretary. The roundtable included Palantir’s special technology adviser Stephen Childs, who is also a former NHS commercial director. 

Stuart Andrew, shadow secretary of state for health and social care, said there were “serious questions” about Jones’s decision-making.

“Labour spent years in opposition demanding higher standards of transparency and accountability,” the Conservative MP said. He called for “full transparency . . . to maintain public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of decision-making”.

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Jones previously held a role in Downing Street under Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson. After leaving government she became non-executive director at the DHSC while taking on more than a dozen private consulting contracts.

David Rowland, director of the research group Centre for Health and the Public Interest, said: “Concerns about conflicts of interest at the top of the civil service are real and significant — and this issue shows that the current rules are clearly inadequate in protecting the public interest. 

“They should be urgently overhauled to restore trust and to prevent corporate influence from tainting the impartiality of the civil service.” 

The DHSC said: “All the Permanent Secretary’s interests have been appropriately declared in good faith.” It noted that NHS England had awarded Palantir’s FDP contract before Jones was appointed to her current role.

Meanwhile Britain’s statistics agency, the Office for Statistics Regulation, said it is reviewing NHS England’s main claims about the benefits of Palantir’s software. 

The review relates to NHS England’s claim that the platform, which aims to bring together disparate health data, has contributed to 110,000 additional operations being carried out and to a 15 per cent reduction in discharge delays. 

The FT reported last month that the NHS site was recently updated to state that the health service could not “draw conclusions about cause and effect as other variables have not been controlled for”.