Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how much funding his Department has allocated to UK cyber security in each of the last five years.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) has significantly increased the funding invested in cyber security for Defence over the last five years. In the 2015-2020 spending review period, MOD's total commitment to cyber security programmes and capabilities is approximately £2.5 billion.

The MOD does not tackle the technical issues of cyber security in isolation: our approach to cyber security spans technical, organisational, procedural, policy and physical measures. As investment is integrated across all of these areas, and across different teams within MOD, it is not possible to give a figure purely for UK cyber security. However, I can provide examples of the investments the MOD has been making in cyber over the last five years.

In July 2013, we announced that the MOD had allocated £70 million from the Defence budget for improving cyber security capabilities over four years.

In July 2014, the Prime Minister announced a package of investment in equipment for our Armed Forces, which included £75 million over four years specifically for cyber defence.

In 2015, the National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review made clear that cyber security remains a national priority and made clear Defence's roles in cyberspace. £1.9 billion was pledged to deliver the National Cyber Security Strategy (NCSS) over the Spending Review period (2015-2020).

In 2016, over £40 million was allocated for the Cyber Security Operations Centre. This is a dedicated facility staffed by experts that utilises state-of-the-art defensive cyber capabilities to protect the MOD's cyberspace from malicious actors. A further £265 million is being invested in a pioneering approach to root out cyber vulnerabilities within our military platforms and wider cyber dependent systems.