Britain's former US ambassador founded lobbyist that represented spy-tech firm, saw it win big roles in UK defense, health tech
A newly released cache of communications involving Peter Mandelson show the UK former ambassador to the US invited Prime Minister Kier Starmer to meet Palantir founder Peter Thiel in July last year.
More than a decade ago, Mandelson co-founded Global Counsel, a lobbying biz which included Palantir as a client. The US spy-tech company – prior to the current administration coming to power in July 2024 – won government contracts, including multi-million-pound deals with the NHS. It signed an agreement with the Ministry of Defence in January.
Palantir was awarded more than £60 million in UK health service deals during the Covid era without any competition. It later won the £330 million NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP) deal after a much-criticized procurement the government maintained was fair and open.
In an email with the subject line “Peter Thiel,” Mandelson last year addressed Morgan McSweeney, then chief of staff to the Prime Minister. The email said the “celebrated techie” Thiel would be in London during August 2025 and asks whether “the PM would like to meet him.”
Another email dated March 2025, from an unnamed third party, which was addressed to Louis Mosley, executive vice-president of Palantir Technologies for UK and Europe, as well as to Mandelson, said that Mandelson himself was set to arrive at The Hill & Valley Forum 2025 event — run by “a private bipartisan community of lawmakers and innovators committed to harnessing the power of technology” — with Mosley.
The email suggested inviting Mandelson to the “daytime forum and dinner” and to “grab a coffee or tea sometime in DC.”
Some of the references to Palantir in the documents — released in connection with Mandelson’s links with convicted sex trafficker and financier Jeffrey Epstein — have been redacted on the basis of being "prejudicial to UK national security or international relations."
Mandelson co-founded Global Counsel in 2010. In 2022, The Register uncovered its role in lobbying on behalf of Palantir in the build-up to the US spy-tech firm winning the £330 million contract for the FDP.
Matthew Swindells was national director for operations and information at NHS England and Improvement (NHSE&I), a non-departmental public body under the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), until the end of July 2019.
From September 2019, he began working for Global Counsel. The association with Palantir was such that Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, the flagship Palantir user where Swindells is a chairman, said he would be excluded from "any decision making in relation to Palantir [PDF]."
The NHS began work with Palantir in March 2020, during the early months of the pandemic, after it was awarded a contract for just £1. It went on to win £60 million in resulting contracts without competition. In December 2021, Global Counsel and Palantir jointly hosted a webinar to consider the "next steps the UK should take in realising UK's life sciences vision." The event also launched Palantir's white paper, titled A National Technical Framework to Underpin the UK Life Sciences Vision.
Swindells chaired the webinar meeting. Also speaking were professor Martin Severs, former medical director at NHS Digital, and Dr Claire Bloomfield, then deputy director for value of data, Centre for Improving Data Collaboration, NHSX, the disbanded digital strategy unit under the Department for Health and Social Care.
Officials said NHS management might take part in supplier events to ensure the health service is "part of the conversation" in the health tech industry.
The Palantir white paper argued for "a logically federated, locally controlled cloud-based data infrastructure," while the later NHS data strategy of June 2022 said the NHS was “looking to develop a federated data platform which will be a system of connected platforms."
Palantir won the £330 million Federated Data Platform contract in November 2023 after a procurement process with NHS England, the soon-to-be-defunct health quango, maintained was open and fair.
Swindells stepped down from his role in the health service earlier this year after the Financial Times reported that he'd urged colleagues to add more patient data into a Palantir-built platform while he was advising the US spy-tech firm.
Swindells told the FT he was stepping down at the “end of my term of office, leaving the hospitals improved on when I started.” ®