Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the written evidence by the Paymaster General to the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, published on 3 March, which states that “since 2016 £100m of funding has focussed on building collective resilience to Russian disinformation across Europe and the Eastern Neighbourhood Region”, on what that money was spent; and what is the equivalent figure for funding resilience against Russian disinformation targeted at the UK.

The CDMD programme contributes to HMG's Russia Strategy and UK national security by supporting projects which expose and build resilience to disinformation operations associated with Russia across Europe and the Eastern Neighbourhood. The types of support given varies from mentoring with UK media organisations; consultancy on programming; funded co-productions and support for regional Russian language media initiatives. Addressing the challenge of disinformation is a whole of Government effort and draws on resources from a number of Departments with costs met through their respective budgets.