The Institute is a non-profit organisation set up by former UK Prime MinisterTony Blair which proclaims its ambition as being to help make globalisation work for the many, not the few. It claims to help countries, their people and their governments address some of the most difficult challenges in the world today. Bringing together the various organisations Blair set up after leaving office – the Tony Blair Governance Initiative and the Tony Blair Faith Foundation – as well as his work on the Middle East Peace Process, establishing a new area of work: Renewing the Centre. Blair’s intention was to expand the activity of these organisations, re-orientating the mission to reflect the overlap between extremism, governance, the Middle East and the policies needed to fight populism in the West.[1]
In September 2025, the Institute was reported to be lobbying for the creation of an NHS Data Trust to commercialise data that could "help develop" the UK's "life sciences" sector, as well as related industries like artificial intelligence. In 2024 NHS England gave the US deep state corporation Palantir a contract to create a platform designed to bring together existing NHS data into a single framework.
The angle from TBI to sell this to the public, was calling for a “bold and imaginative” strategy to overcome the current fragmented situation in the UK, where data projects have been split across multiple projects that have "struggled to achieve long-term sustainability and deliver tangible benefits to patients."[3]
Wikileaks analysed this push as " Larry Ellison uses the Tony Blair Institute to control the NHS and Britain's most sensitive health data. "When it comes to tech policy, TBI's role is to go to developing economies and sell them Larry Ellison’s gear. Oracle and TBI are inseparable. Ellison, described by Trump as the “CEO of everything”, is now shaping NHS reform through Blair's institute. TBI is pushing a single national data library and a new "front door" to patient records, embedding Britain's health system within Oracle’s infrastructure. The cash has turned TBI into what insiders call a "tech sales & lobbying operation for Oracle." Its agenda mirrors Ellison's global push to unify national data sets."[4][5]
Digital ID
On 26 September 2025, Executive Director of the TBI, Ryan Wain, and Rebecca Vincent, Big Brother Watch's Interim Director, debated on Good Morning Britain whether digital IDs should be mandatory after Sir Keir Starmer declared that every adult in Britain will be required to have a digital ID card.[6]
TBI caught lobbying for A.I.
On 28 May 2026, Green Party leader Zack Polanski called for full disclosure of TBI lobbying activity within the UK on behalf of A.I., saying "It would be bad for public confidence if there was a suspicion that large corporate interests are buying access to the Government via the Tony Blair Institute. My letter to the cabinet office:"
Tony Blair's essay published by the Tony Blair Institute yesterday[7] contained some interesting points, notably, a call to switch to an A.I.-focused economy, with more government investment in A.I., which he argued would be facilitated by cuts to welfare spending, reductions in the minimum wage and reduced workers' rights.
It has been widely reported that Larry Ellison, the owner of Oracle, which specialises in A.I., funded the Tony Blair Institute with over £250m, and also that the Tony Blair Institute has significant contacts and influence within the government.
We are sure you will agree that it's important for the public to know whether there is a link between Larry Ellison's donations and Tony Blair's public advocacy for more government funding of A.I. We therefore request that all formal and informal contacts between representatives of the Tony Blair Institute and government departments (officials and ministers) are disclosed.
It would be bad for public confidence if there was a suspicion that large corporate interests are buying access to the government via the Tony Blair Institute.
On 21 July 2018, it was reported by the Telegraph that Blair had signed a deal worth £9,000,000 with Saudi Arabia.[9] The Tony Blair Institute confirmed that it has received donations from the U.S. State Department and Saudi Arabia.[10] Apart from that, the funding structure is secretive.
In 2021, Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, one of the world’s largest software companies, became one the former prime minister’s biggest donors, when it gave the institute $33 million, with plans for future donations of a further $49 million. The money was earmarked for a joint partnership to "help" African countries to create a central database of vaccination records. Blair said "This is an immensely exciting and potentially ground-breaking initiative for recording information on all disease vaccinations and treatments in African nations...Though Africa has coped well with Covid-19, it still needs to be part of international efforts to control the disease, including for international travel...That means vaccination of at least a significant portion of the population, requiring the highest quality data system so that everyone’s vaccine experience is recorded."[11] The grant came despite the institute having no particular expertise or experience in creating such systems.
People
In February 2024, Sir Patrick Vallance, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser during Covid, joined TBI's "team of expert Strategic Counsellors", alongside former Chief of the Defence Staff General Sir Nick Carter.[12][13]
