Russian cyberattacks against UK are 'Putin Tax' costing $3.3 billion, says lawmaker

What happened

Ahead of what is expected to be a difficult first budget from Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s new government later this month, the report argues that if the public cannot see what Russian activity costs, it cannot weigh that burden against the cost of defending against it. Downie submitted a series of parliamentary questions to several government departments and found that ministers held no estimates of the economic impact of incidents linked to the Kremlin.

A report by a Labour MP and an academic argues that if the British public cannot see what Russian activity costs, it cannot weigh that burden against the cost of defending against it. The report, which gives its own estimate of between £2 billion and £2.5 billion ($2.6 billion to $3.3 billion) a year — a figure described as a floor — is titled The Putin Tax and written by Labour MP Graeme Downie, alongside postdoctoral researcher Dominic Reed.

Its authors say their methodology in arriving at that figure was limited, but stressed the principal point was the lack of an official alternative. “Yet no equivalent effort has been made to understand its cumulative financial impact.”