Palantir's Tom Watson lectures MP on accuracy, citing selective data

Former Labour deputy challenges Clive Lewis but skips the warnings attached to NHS figures

Palantir's newly appointed UK senior vice president Tom Watson has accused Labour MP Clive Lewis of making "incorrect claims" about the company – while repeating NHS performance figures that the statistics regulator has said require careful caveats.

Watson, the former deputy leader of the Labour Party, advised Palantir from 2024 before joining it full-time last month. He now works alongside Louis Mosley, the company's executive vice president for the UK and Europe.

His letter to Lewis was reported by The Nerve after the MP discussed it at the Labour Party conference this week. Watson challenged Lewis's statements about Palantir's UK contracts in healthcare, policing, and defense.

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Lewis said the level of detail in the letter felt like a message that "we're watching you." Palantir's Gotham or Foundry software would not have been needed to compile the dossier: Watson cited statements made in Parliament, written questions, interviews, opinion pieces, and social media.

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Watson also described Palantir as a major UK investor and said its software had helped convict a gang stealing money from ATMs, support victims of domestic abuse, and improve the availability of Royal Navy vessels.

In rebutting what he described as misinformation, Watson said the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP) was live at 142 trusts and that "137 are already reporting benefits."

The broad claim echoes figures promoted by NHS England, which the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) subsequently told to communicate the platform's purported benefits more carefully.

Following complaints about NHS England's use of data to promote the FDP, the OSR noted that the health service had added a caveat to its published figures on June 6: "We cannot therefore draw conclusions about cause and effect as other variables have not been controlled for."

NHS England also updated its methodology and agreed to identify before-and-after comparisons more clearly in public communications. The OSR asked to be kept informed of its progress.

Watson's letter did not include that caveat. Data obtained by campaign group Foxglove illustrated why the qualification matters. NHS England said an Inpatient Care Co-ordination Solution based on the FDP was associated with 111,589 additional patients undergoing procedures in operating theatres.

Of the 41 trusts using the tool, however, 13 reported carrying out fewer operations after its introduction. Other factors – including staffing, case complexity, and bed capacity – could have affected those results in either direction.

Foxglove also found that Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust accounted for 84 percent of the reported fall in outpatient waiting lists across the 16 trusts using the relevant tool.

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Watson may therefore want to apply the same scrutiny to the figures he deploys when accusing others of misinformation.