Martin Wrigley

Defence Readiness

We have had a very interesting debate, with interesting speeches from many Members. I, too, am fully behind the rapid increase in funds for defence and I wish to add my thanks to our serving personnel. Defence readiness requires a whole-society response and sovereign capability. Across a wide range of issues in our technologies, defence, infrastructure, housing and regulation, the same pattern keeps appearing. Services and systems that are set up to serve the public gradually drift away from hav

Park Home Owners

I thank the hon. Member for securing this valuable debate. I have a good number of park home sites in my constituency. Not only do they suffer the 10% commission, poor maintenance levels and high service charges, but they have atrocious service on the utilities that they have to buy through the park home owner. Some years ago, one site collectively was charged £100,000 for a water leak, which was £1,000 a home. I got that refunded from South West Water. The same site recently had blocked drains

Peter Mandelson: Government Appointment

Yesterday, I asked the Prime Minister about the security vetting condition that required Peter Mandelson to be accompanied when visiting previous clients. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need to find out whether the lack of accompaniment when visiting Palantir in Washington with the Prime Minister was a one-off or simply Mandelson continuing business as usual?

Security Vetting

I understand that Peter Mandelson’s vetting clearance was conditional on his being accompanied to meetings with former clients, such as Palantir. Will the Prime Minister clarify why there is no record of his and Peter Mandelson’s meeting with Palantir in Washington, and will he tell the House what it was all about?

NHS Federated Data Platform

I beg to move, That this House has considered the NHS Federated Data Platform. We are at a key time for the NHS as it changes from analogue to digital, and data is key to achieving better health results for all our constituents, as well as to the future of the NHS. AI analysis of scans can spot patterns of disease before the human eye, and modern communications can be much more effective than sending letters, which often arrive late. We are, however, at a junction where we can correct a series o

NHS Federated Data Platform

I thank the Minister for his comments. However, I do not think he has been accurately informed about the status of the contract. I have the unredacted contract with me, which says nothing about software delivery. The whole thing is based on subscription, and the intellectual property of all specially written software, which is defined to include the data collection software, belongs to Palantir. None of this belongs to NHS. That is in this contract—I can show it to the Minister, if he likes. I t

NHS Federated Data Platform

If the right hon. Gentleman looks at the contract, he will see that it is subscription only: deliveries under supplier software—none; deliveries under third-party software—none. Any programming written under the contract is owned by Palantir. The contract has to be adapted for any next phase so that Palantir can be moved out. Palantir is not only the wrong technical solution; NHS users report that it is awful to use. An open letter to NHS England said: “we already have similar tools in use that

NHS Federated Data Platform

I do agree. Palantir will not enable GPs, paramedics or anybody else to see hospital data. They will have to go through Palantir to see that data, and they will not be able to access patient records from the hospital to the GP or vice versa. Like any data warehouse, Palantir requires connecting software that reaches into each of the NHS’s internal systems and gathers data. That data gathering is being done NHS trust by NHS trust, as there are differences inside each one. That is embedding the us

NHS Federated Data Platform

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, as do the Prime Minister and the Science and Research Minister. Turning to the solution, the solution is wrong. There have been many attempts to unify the NHS by using a single IT system; each one has failed. In reality, we must think of the NHS as thousands of independent organisations. NHS England has been guiding organisations towards a combined data dictionary for more than 10 years, combining definitions of what data means, how it is recorded and the

NHS Federated Data Platform

I think my hon. Friend has been reading my speech in advance. I absolutely agree with him. I see that the outgoing NHS England chief data and analytics officer, Ming Tang, has publicly joined Palantir’s fightback, saying that the system is delivering—but having introduced Palantir and lobbied to deploy it, she would say that, wouldn’t she? Given Palantir’s habit of lobbying civil servants and the revolving door from Government, I wait to see where she will end up. I ask the Minister to review th

NHS Federated Data Platform

I agree with the hon. Lady entirely. The secret meeting in 2019 between Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings and Peter Thiel—the founder and chair of Palantir—that started this whole thing, for which there are no minutes, must be clarified as well. I ask the Minister to consider using the contract renewal point to stop the chaotic expansion of the Palantir platform monopoly, to work to a staged exit with a retender for British companies to build a replacement for Palantir, and to deliver a better,