Top civil servant boomeranged between government and Tony Blair Institute
Posted: 16th March 2026
The Tony Blair Institute and the Ellison Institute of Technology sent senior staff members to work in the government department tasked with developing AI policy, openDemocracy can reveal.
UK tech firm Faculty, which has links to the TBI, also embedded a member of staff in the Department of Science, Information and Technology (DSIT).
In one case, the TBI hired a senior civil servant tasked with leading the government’s AI programme, then seconded them straight back to their old job in the department – a potential loophole in rules intended to stop former civil servants from using their connections to lobby old colleagues.
In another, a different TBI staffer wrote on LinkedIn that he had played a key role in drafting the government’s flagship AI Opportunities Action Plan, its far-reaching blueprint for AI policy, during an 11-month secondment to DSIT…