Many thanks to Andrew Marr for his excellent piece about Palantir and the wider implications of NHS England’s adoption of its Federated Data Platform for the use and ownership of NHS data (Politics, 21 March). NHS data is indeed a treasure trove, and it is highly vulnerable to plunder by the Thiels and Trumps of this world. The contract negotiated by NHSE – in the face of informed opposition and strong warnings – must be fully revealed.
The government must act to ensure that our personal data continues in public ownership and is protected on our behalf by the NHS. It must also ensure that the NHS holds the intellectual property rights; that use of the data is granted for specified research, planning and public-interest purposes only; and that any profits are ploughed back into the NHS. Otherwise, as we learned from the Care.data disaster of 2013-16, the trust of patients will be lost, opt-outs will escalate, and the integrity, quality and value of the database will be permanently damaged – all in the name of private profit.
Marcia Saunders, London N10
Take stock of shares
George Eaton (Newsmaker, 21 March) mentions Labour’s “thin share of 33.7 per cent” of the votes cast in the 2024 election. More meaningful is the even thinner proportion of the total electorate who voted Labour, given that many people had votes but didn’t cast them: 20.14 per cent. To assess the popularity of a political party one must look at the number of votes won, not the number of seats.
Connaire Kensit, London SW15
Schools of thought
Jason Cowley is right that Bridget Phillipson is pleasing neither left nor right with her Schools Bill (These Times, 21 March). How could she? How could anyone please Katharine Birbalsingh, who calls the Education Secretary a “Marxist” because Phillipson wants all teachers to be qualified, or Amanda Spielman, who tells us that this will cut the “autonomy” of schools from the halcyon days of Michael Gove’s system “success” (sic). Apparently Phillipson has been “captured by the unions” because she is speaking to them.
Cowley was not clear as to why the left doesn’t like Phillipson, but he calls her a “top-down bureaucratic Fabian”. I don’t recognise this as a core value of the Fabians. However, I report that generally my colleagues do not think the interim review on the curriculum is radical enough and are unhappy with the Ofsted proposals submitted so far.
However, Phillipson treads a very difficult path, and we find her (like Cowley) both determined and thoughtful.
Chris Harris, media and publishing co-ordinator, Fabian Education Policy Group
Jason Cowley claims that Bridget Phillipson excludes 7 per cent of children from being “our children” and from the politics of the common good because they attend private schools. On her comment, “Our children need mental health support more that private schools need new pools”: I have never heard of a child being excluded from NHS mental health services because they attended a private school. But 93 per cent of children are excluded from the superior facilities of private schools because they are state educated.
Siân Lewis, Sheffield
According to TES, there are 29,158 schools in the UK, of which 4,181 are state-funded secondary schools. Given that, why does every article about the Education Bill only ever seem to quote the opinions and thoughts of one head teacher, Katharine Birbalsingh? Are we to assume that none of the 29,157 other headteachers have opinions on it? Or is it more the case that very few journalists can be bothered to ask them?
Mark Smith, Chislehurst
Unstable logic
In his assessment of the impasse at which Nato finds itself, David Reynolds concludes that, “we must hope for the best, while preparing for the worst” (The NS Essay, 21 March). Irrespective of what fate might await those nations committed to Nato, they should not lose sight of its founding principles: the promotion of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. Failure to remain true to such principles – even in the face of acute adversity – would be tantamount to a renunciation of them.
Paradoxically, the politics of instability might mean that the worst will not come. On 22 March, the focus of the China-Japan-South Korea Trilateral Summit would suggest that the geopolitical displacement caused by Donald Trump has influenced those who might be deemed adversaries to recalibrate their foreign policy. If we consider the critical access to European air space or European finance commerce, the deck – to extend Trump’s favourite metaphor – might not be stacked entirely against Europe.
Jordan Scott, Newcastle upon Tyne
Red in tooth and awww…
I know that criticising dog-ownership is one of 21st-century Britain’s last great heresies, but would it be mean-spirited to note the cognitive dissonance – in an otherwise excellent Diary (21 March) – in Rachel Clarke’s pondering our declining biodiversity and the scene of two Labradors “rabidly seek[ing] out” wildlife as they rampage through a wood in spring?
Ben Forward, Kent
Spread the words
Jason Cowley’s piece on the British Council (Encounter, 14 March), prompted by a conversation with its CEO, Scott McDonald, on a train from Lodz to Warsaw, reminds me of my visit to Lodz in 1988, when I was director of the British Council in Poland. The visit was to open a reading room there; our libraries in Warsaw and Krakow, the latter a partnership with the Jagiellonian University, were already well established. The value of soft power and the British Council should never be underestimated.
Richard Alford, London SE27
Dublin entendre
Finn McRedmond has my sympathy over her efforts to read Ulysses (Out of the Ordinary, 21 March). I first tried it in my early twenties and I gave up after 40 pages. The same happened on my second attempt, ten years later. By the time of my third, after many more years, I’d stayed a few times in Dublin. At last, I had no trouble. The secret is to read it in an Irish accent.
Nigel Austin, Dorchester, Dorset
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This article appears in the 26 Mar 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Putin’s Endgame