Written questions by Wrigley.

Whether the Government has issued guidance to help ensure that AI solutions trained on NHS datasets align with NHS principles.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions trained on National Health Service datasets must align with core NHS principles, including safety, fairness, transparency, and accountability. These principles are embedded in the NHS’s approach to digital innovation and data use.To support this, NHS England utilises guidance developed by the NHS Transformation Directorate, which sets out expectations for the safe, lawful, and ethical use of AI in health and care settings. This includes ensuring that AI systems are explainable, that data is used responsibly, and that decisions remain under human oversight.The guidance has been reviewed by the Health and Care Information Governance Working Group, including the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and the National Data Guardian (NDG), and is publicly available on the NHS Transformation Directorate’s website:https://transform.england.nhs.uk/information-governance/guidance/artificial-intelligence/This framework helps ensure that AI innovations developed using NHS data are aligned with NHS values and are deployed in a way that benefits patients, supports clinicians, and maintains public trust.

Food and Rural Affairs, if he will require South West Water to publish (a) sites receiving investment under the storm overflow programme, (b) timelines for that investment and (c) expected outcomes at each location.

It is important that the public have access to reliable information on storm overflow discharges. The Water (Special Measures) Act introduced a duty for water companies to publish data related to discharges from all emergency overflows within one hour of the discharge beginning. This matches the pre-existing duty for storm overflows, which was introduced on 01 January. To support this, Water UK have launched a central hub that provides discharge data of every storm overflow in England on a single website. As part of Price Review 2024 (PR24), which runs from 2025–2030, water companies will be delivering record levels of investment. This includes South West Water delivering £764 million of investment to reduce storm overflow spills and £55 million to install real-time monitors at high-priority sites. Ofwat will hold water companies to account for the decisions set at the Price Review. Ofwat's claw back mechanism ensures that funding for schemes not delivered is returned to customers, by reducing bills.

Innovation and Technology, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of his Department's white paper entitled A pro-innovation approach to AI regulation, published in March 2023, CP 815, on proprietary models trained on NHS data.

As set out in the AI Opportunities Action Plan, most AI systems should be regulated at the point of use and our expert regulators are best placed to do so. Departments are working proactively with regulators to provide strategic direction and support them on their AI capability needs.

Whether he has received recent correspondence from Palantir.

My Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care received a letter from Louis Mosley, the Executive Vice President for the United Kingdom and Europe of Palantir Technologies, on 3 March 2025, offering to meet to discuss the roll-out of the NHS Federated Data Platform.

Whether her Department has taken steps with Network Rail to develop a proposal for the Teignmouth to Parsons Tunnel section of the South West Rail Resilience Programme since the Spending Review 2025.

We are continuing to fund drainage and ground investigations that will provide Network Rail with detailed data on the stability of the cliffs above that section of route and will inform their consideration of a proposal for a long-term solution in due course. The project will be kept under active review as part of our longer-term pipeline of schemes, for further consideration when funding discussions are being held and we have a clear proposal for a long-term solution.

Whether alternative (a) funding models and (b) timelines are under consideration for delivering the final stage of the South West Rail Resilience Programme.

We are continuing to fund drainage and ground investigations that will provide Network Rail with detailed data on the stability of the cliffs above that section of route and will inform their consideration of a proposal for a long-term solution in due course. The project will be kept under active review as part of our longer-term pipeline of schemes, for further consideration when funding discussions are being held and we have a clear proposal for a long-term solution.

What steps her Department plans to take to improve resilience along the stretch between Parsons Tunnel and Teignmouth pending the completion of Phase 5.

We are continuing to fund drainage and ground investigations that will provide Network Rail with detailed data on the stability of the cliffs above that section of route and will inform their consideration of a proposal for a long-term solution in due course. The project will be kept under active review as part of our longer-term pipeline of schemes, for further consideration when funding discussions are being held and we have a clear proposal for a long-term solution.

Whether her Department has set a deadline for Network Rail to produce a revised proposal for Phase 5 of the South West Rail Resilience Programme.

We are continuing to fund drainage and ground investigations that will provide Network Rail with detailed data on the stability of the cliffs above that section of route and will inform their consideration of a proposal for a long-term solution in due course. The project will be kept under active review as part of our longer-term pipeline of schemes, for further consideration when funding discussions are being held and we have a clear proposal for a long-term solution.

Whether she has received recent correspondence from Palantir.

Home Office ministers and officials receive correspondence from a range of businesses and other organisations on a regular basis.

Innovation and Technology, whether he has received recent correspondence from Palantir.

The Secretary of State has received recent correspondence from Palantir and will be responding in due course.

Under what circumstances Phase 5 of the South West Rail Resilience Programme would receive funding.

We are continuing to fund drainage and ground investigations that will provide Network Rail with detailed data on the stability of the cliffs above that section of route and will inform their consideration of a proposal for a long-term solution in due course. The project will be kept under active review as part of our longer-term pipeline of schemes, for further consideration when funding discussions are being held and we have a clear proposal for a long-term solution.

What intellectual property rights NHS England retains over (a) data models, (b) ontologies and (c) analytics solutions produced within the Federated Data Platform.

Within the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP), the National Health Service retains the Intellectual Property of the solutions it funds or develops, including all associated data models, ontologies, including the NHS Canonical data model, products, and analytical solutions. Under the FDP-Associated Services Agreement between NHS England and Palantir, background Intellectual Property, prior to entering into the agreement, remains the property of the respective party.

Whether she has made an assessment of the potential impact of delaying Phase 5 of the South West Rail Resilience Programme on (a) the local economy and (b) transport resilience.

The Spending Review considered and prioritised investment across all government spending, taking account of business cases and affordability, including economic and social impacts. The Government does not undertake formal consultation with regional stakeholders as part of Spending Reviews.

What consultations were undertaken with regional stakeholders prior to the decision not to fund Phase 5 of the South West Rail Resilience Programme.

The Spending Review considered and prioritised investment across all government spending, taking account of business cases and affordability, including economic and social impacts. The Government does not undertake formal consultation with regional stakeholders as part of Spending Reviews.

If she will publish her Department's analysis of phase 5 of the South West Rail Resilience Programme.

The Department does not publish analysis of rail enhancement projects whilst they remain in development.

Whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential risks of cross‑contamination risk when data from multiple NHS trusts are ingested into a single cloud environment.

In order to assess the risk and impact to data privacy, all Federated Data Platform (FDP) installations are required to complete a Data Privacy Impact Assessment (DPIA). An overarching DPIA for the FDP was also undertaken. Each FDP Tenant is a logically separated instance of the Foundry Platform. Each tenant has separate administrators, and independent control of all data ingress and egress. User access is controlled by a combination of Role Based Access Controls and Purpose Based Access Controls to ensure that access to data is only available to users with a documented and auditable reason for access. All changes to the product or platform go through a careful process of development, testing, quality assurance, and change management before they are released. This helps to prevent errors and problems. The FDP has several measures in place to keep data safe. These include:¾strong network security, namely firewalls and intrusion detection systems that monitor all network traffic to and from the platform, to block unauthorised access and detect suspicious activity;data encryption of all data stored on the platform, both when transferred, or in transit, and when stored on servers;purpose based access, as users only have access to the data they need to do their jobs. This helps to minimise the risk of unauthorised access to sensitive information;detailed logging and monitoring, as all user activity on the platform is logged and monitored for suspicious activity. This helps to identify potential security breaches quickly and maintains a full audit trail. Security logs are encrypted and stored securely;regular security testing, with the platform undergoing regular penetration testing and vulnerability scanning to identify and fix any weaknesses in its security;development lifecycle, with all changes to the product or platform going through a careful process of development, testing, quality assurance, and change management before they are released. This helps to prevent errors and problems; andmonitoring, as live services teams constantly monitor the product or platform 24 hours a day, seven days a week to quickly identify and fix any issues that may arise.

Whether her Department commissioned an independent assessment of the viability of proposed engineering solutions for Phase 5 of the South West Rail Resilience Programme (a) during and (b) since the Spending Review 2025.

We are continuing to fund drainage and ground investigations that will provide Network Rail with detailed data on the stability of the cliffs above that section of route and will inform their consideration of a proposal for a long-term solution in due course. The project will be kept under active review as part of our longer-term pipeline of schemes, for further consideration when funding discussions are being held and we have a clear proposal for a long-term solution.

If she will allocate funding to Phase 5 of the South West Rail Resilience Programme in the next spending review.

We have set out our plans for this Spending Review period and will consider the next Spending Review at the appropriate time.

What discussions he has had with NHS England on its data cleaning specification for Palantir; and whether that specification defines how patient data are (a) extracted, (b) transformed and (c) loaded into the federated data platform.

NHS England has not had any discussions with my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on this matter. Each local organisation has their own instance of the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP) for which they are the data controller, and can opt into any of the core products that support delivery of patient care. Local organisations can connect and share information currently stored in separate systems to support staff to access the information they need in one safe and secure environment, where there is a legal basis to do so. Data is only ingested into an FDP Tenant following establishment of the legal basis and a specific purpose for usage of that data. Most commonly this is for use in FDP products, for example those which support the management of waiting lists, theatre scheduling, or effective discharge of patients. Data is extracted, cleaned, enriched, and transformed according to the requirements of each use case or product. The FDP program uses the concept of the NHS Canonical Data Model to ensure that data is treated consistently across FDP Tenants, and this enables the development of consistent, reusable products. Prior to ingestion from the source systems to the FDP Tenant, the NHS-Privacy Enhancing Technology (NHS-PET) service registers the flow. NHS-PET is a standalone service located between primary data sources and the FDP-Associated Services (AS) platform, providing a data orchestration and privacy service for FDP-AS data ingress and inter-tenant transfers. The NHS-PET service creates records of the types and uses of data which are used in every instance of NHS FDP. If the data is to be used for secondary uses, not direct care, the NHS-PET service can treat personal data to remove identifiers utilising techniques such as anonymisation, masking, generalisation, and pseudonymisation. Privacy treated data is modelled by FDP-AS and is then made available for specific purposes.

If he will make an assessment of the potential impact of working with commercial suppliers whose senior leadership have expressed overt political affiliations on the reputation of NHS England.

Commercial contracts awarded by the Department, NHS England, or other National Health Service bodies are held with a company rather than individuals.NHS bodies set their own policies on how to award contracts, but they must do so in line with the law, specifically the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and now the Procurement Act 2023 which came into force in February 2025, and central policy. The Government uses a standard selection questionnaire that requires suppliers to confirm they meet certain standards. Suppliers can be excluded for a variety of reasons, including where they are guilty of grave professional misconduct or where they have shown significant or persistent deficiencies in the performance under a prior public contract. Full guidance on the Procurement Specific Questionnaire, which replaces the standard selection questionnaire under the Public Contract Regulations, can be found on the Government Commercial Function’s Procurement Pathways website.