“Today I can set out a number of both immediate and longer term measures that will help us deliver on our priorities, and they are as follows:

• We will increase defence spending by a further £5 billion over the next 2 years. This will bring us to around 2.25% of national income and represents significant progress in meeting our long-term minimum defence spending target of 2.5% of GDP.
• Today’s announcement of £5 billion comes on top of the commitments made by the Chancellor in his Autumn Budget Statement, on top of the £560 million of new investments last year and on top of the record £20 billion uplift announced in 2020.
• Later today the Prime Minister will announce, alongside President Biden and Prime Minister Albanese, the next steps for AUKUS, including how we will deliver multibillion pound conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarine capabilities to the Royal Australian Navy, while setting the highest non-proliferation standards.
• We will provide an additional £20 million uplift to the BBC World Service over the next 2 years, protecting all 42 World Service language services.
• We have also established a new directorate in the FCDO, incorporating the Government Information Cell, to increase our capacity to assess and counter hostile information manipulation by actors, including Russia and China, where it affects UK interests overseas.
• We will double funding for Chinese expertise and capacities in government so that we have more Mandarin speakers and China experts.

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