Cameron says he will increase spending on cyber warfare

Announcement follows a public spat with defence secretary Liam Fox

David Cameron said the Conservatives will increase spending on defence against "cyber warfare"

Prime minister David Cameron has said the Conservatives will increase spending on defence against "cyber warfare" in a bid to "protect our country and face up to the threats of the future".

He was speaking during an interview at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham. The speech followed bruising reports of a rift between right-wing defence secretary Dr Liam Fox and chancellor George Osborne over what Fox claimed in a leaked letter to Cameron were "draconian cuts" on defence.

Cameron argued that much current defence spending is related to the past and dates from the Cold War when the UK was bolstering itself against the the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, in a speech to the conference, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maud announced plans to amend the Freedom of Information Act to require that all digital data released in reply to an FOI demand "must be in re-usabe and machine readable format, available to everyone and able to be exploited for social and commercial purposes."

He accused some local authorities of deliberately making data unusable to anyone else.