\n<\/p>\n
Microsoft has \u201cripped off the NHS\u201d, it was alleged in parliament on Wednesday, as MPs called on ministers to divert more of the government\u2019s multibillion-pound computing budget away from US technology companies and towards British alternatives.<\/p>\n
The Seattle-based firm\u2019s UK government contracts include a five-year deal with the NHS to provide productivity tools reportedly worth over \u00a3700m, while the wider government spent \u00a31.9bn on Microsoft software licences in the 2024-25 financial year alone.<\/p>\n
The allegation against Microsoft was made by Samantha Niblett, a Labour member of the House of Commons select committee on science, innovation and technology, who said during questioning of Ian Murray, the minister for digital government and data: \u201cI know for a fact how Microsoft have ripped off the NHS.\u201d<\/p>\n
Niblett, who worked in the data and technology sector before being elected to parliament in 2024, did not provide further evidence, but when the committee chair, Chi Onwurah, voiced surprise at the claim, she said: \u201cWell, it has.\u201d<\/p>\n
After describing the government\u2019s multibillion-pound deals with Microsoft, Niblett said it \u201cspeaks to the \u2026 power of Microsoft to lock in public sector \u2026 customers and then sort of entice them with cheap deals, and then you\u2019re locked into a contract and then you\u2019re charged exponential amounts\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Guardian has approached Microsoft for comment.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Samantha Niblett, the Labour MP for South Derbyshire, spoke in parliament of the government\u2019s multibillion-pound deals with Microsoft.<\/span> Photograph: https:\/\/www.samanthaniblett.uk\/<\/p>\n The claim comes after a series of deals by the government with other US technology companies including memorandums of understanding and partnerships with the maker of ChatGPT, OpenAI, the AI company Anthropic, and Google.<\/p>\n MPs on the select committee said the UK needed to develop greater \u201csovereign\u201d technology capacity, award more contracts to smaller, local providers, and be less reliant on deals that resulted in government departments becoming locked into services with US firms.<\/p>\n Explaining more about her understanding of Microsoft\u2019s deals with the government, Niblett said: \u201cI have heard that Defra [the Department of Food and Rural Affairs] recently signed a contract renewal for Windows 10, which is now out of date. And that has now resulted in them having to pay more for security checks because they\u2019re using a very, very old version of Windows.<\/p>\n \u201cI just wonder how much scrutiny and attention is given to what seems like a good contract in the first instance, getting locked in with a single provider then ends up essentially ripping off the taxpayer.\u201d<\/p>\n Murray replied to her that it was a \u201cgood question\u201d, but did not address the claim that Microsoft had \u201cripped off the NHS\u201d. He said that the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) was trying to coordinate digital strategy and buying of digital services across the government.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know there is real serious fragmentation in the \u00a321bn the public sector spends every year on technology,\u201d added Emily Middleton, the director general for digital centre design at DSIT, who was also giving evidence in the committee\u2019s inquiry into the \u201cdigital centre of government\u201d.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Get the day\u2019s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cCentral government spends about \u00a31bn a year on cloud [computing],\u201d said Middleton. \u201cThat\u2019s done through a whole host of different contracts. We know we\u2019re not getting the value for money that we should be.\u201d<\/p>\n Emily Darlington, the Labour MP for Milton Keynes Central, asked Murray why the UK relied on US companies such as Palantir, which has a \u00a3330m contract to provide a federated data platform for the NHS, rather than UK companies.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that we are the second most cyber-targeted country in the world,\u201d she said. \u201cBuilding our UK industry and capability is great for our economy, but also is really important for public confidence and really important for our security.\u201d<\/p>\n Murray said the answer was to build greater capabilities here in the UK and to avoid situations where \u201cyou\u2019re stuck with Microsoft all the way through\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s more to be done in terms of procurement,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s more to be done in terms of making sure the smaller companies are not locked out of the process.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Microsoft has \u201cripped off the NHS\u201d, it was alleged in parliament on Wednesday, as MPs called on ministers to divert more of the government\u2019s multibillion-pound computing budget away from US technology companies and towards British alternatives. The Seattle-based firm\u2019s UK government contracts include a five-year deal with the NHS to provide productivity tools reportedly worth<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[336,634,4863,661,1563,1229,7359],"class_list":{"0":"post-34501","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-british","9":"tag-call","10":"tag-contracts","11":"tag-firms","12":"tag-microsoft","13":"tag-nhs","14":"tag-ripped"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}