Andy Burnham told the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday that Britain will create a National Centre for Information Defence. Security chiefs will start work on the body so it can detect, attribute and disrupt hostile state information attacks, with the approach offered as a possible model for other countries.

He said Russian agencies run an industrial-scale campaign that costs the Kremlin 1.3 billion pounds a year, reaches into homes and promotes a picture of national decline plus unrest after terror attacks. Burnham stated those claims do not match reality and that British elections have already been targeted.

He argued that national security depends on social cohesion and that the threat justifies a wide-reaching effort to build public resilience, beginning in every household, after a decade of such pressure.