Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the use of Foundry, a Palantir product, by NHS England as part of some of its pilots of the collection and dissemination of the Faster Data Flow Acute Data Set, how much money from the public purse has been spent on the elective care recovery pilots involving the use of Palantir Foundry to date; and if he will provide a breakdown of (a) spending on individual trusts’ implementation costs and (b) payments made to (i) Palantir and (ii) consultants.

The elective recovery programme aims to help trusts across England better plan, schedule and manage patients through the Elective pathway. The spend-to-date on the pilot is £20.2 million. This includes £11.2 million on implementation within individual trusts. The spend-to-date includes £1.2 million paid to Palantir to accelerate elective surgical waiting list validation, correctly prioritise patients awaiting treatment and improve theatre utilisation. This also includes £5.4 million to external consultants to help with the discovery stage, delivery, strategic direction, management and training within the programme. The remaining £2.4 million has been spent on internal consultant teams within the Commissioning Support Units.