The government awarded £3.4 billion in NHS funding to the company Infosys, owned by Rishi Sunak’s in-laws.
This is not true. The government announced £3.4 billion of funding for NHS technology, but it has not yet been awarded.
The government awarded £35 billion in NHS funding to the company Infosys, owned by Rishi Sunak’s in-laws.
This is not true. The government estimated a £3.4 billion investment into NHS IT, which has not yet been awarded to any company, would yield savings of £35 billion.
The government has not awarded Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s in-laws £35 billion through NHS IT contracts, despite multiple social media posts claiming this was the case.
Following the government’s Spring Budget in March, a number of posts have falsely claimed that £3.4 billion to £35 billion in funding to improve NHS technology has been awarded in full to Infosys, which was founded by Mr Sunak’s wife's father.
Selective or misleading use of official information without appropriate context and caveats can damage public trust in official information.
Users have claimed that the funding awarded ranges from £3.4 billion to £35 billion. Some also suggest this funding has been split with Fujitsu as a partner of Infosys, and also with Palantir.
But this isn’t right. The £3.4 billion figure is the total amount set aside to improve technology used by the NHS.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced the funding during the budget and it is due to be provided over three years from April 2025.
The £35 billion figure may originate from government estimates projecting how much money the investment into NHS IT could save by the end of the decade. Full Fact has not assessed this figure.
But this funding has not yet been awarded.
Since 2015, Infosys (along with other companies on the same bid) has been awarded government contracts worth around £986 million.
It’s worth noting that, if it existed, a £35 billion contract would be the single largest IT contract ever awarded in the history of NHS England—more than a hundred times greater than the largest contract ever reported.
That title is held by Palantir and its partners, who won the contract for the NHS “federated data platform” in November, valued at £330 million over seven years.
Palantir’s press team confirmed that it has not received any funding from the government since the November award.
Infosys was founded by the Prime Minister’s father-in-law, N.R. Narayana Murthy, in India in 1981. Mr Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, is a shareholder in the company.
We have published several fact checks on both Infosys and Mr Sunak’s in-laws including claims that the company was the main beneficiary of a £1 billion trade deal with India, and that it was subcontracted to work on the UK’s emergency alerts system, which it was not.
Infosys has also been contacted for comment.
Image courtesy of Number 10
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because Infosys did not receive £3.4 billion or £35 billion through NHS contracts.
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