Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps he is taking to modernise defence strategy to ensure the UK can address hybrid threats.

Hybrid threats require a whole of Government approach, not just Defence. Accordingly, the UK approach has centred upon using all arms of Government and the levers available to deter, respond to, and counter hostile activity.

The Modernising Defence Programme, published in 2018, acknowledged that hybrid threats are one of the driving factors fundamentally changing the character of warfare and set out the ways in which Defence would mobilise, modernise and transform to address this. The Ministry of Defence (MOD) is actively working to develop the right capabilities, policies and permissions to effectively respond to hybrid threats, and the additional £2.2 billion funding for Defence announced as part of Spending Round 19 is supporting that effort.

We are also working to protect our conventional capabilities from new threats. The MOD has already invested significantly in cyber defence and security, across a broad range of its capabilities and infrastructure. This includes investing £12 million in the Defence Cyber School, £22 million on the creation of new cyber operations centres, and £40 million in the Cyber Security Operations Capability. £265 million has also been invested in a pioneering approach to root out cyber vulnerabilities within military platforms and wider cyber-dependent systems, helping Defence better understand and mitigate cyber risks.