20. We have also led international efforts in response to COVID-19, under which we have: • Hosted the Global Vaccine Summit in June 2020 and reinforced our position as the largest donor to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. • Committed up to £548 million to COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) to help provide developing countries with 1 billion doses of the vaccine in 2021. We will also send the majority of any future surplus coronavirus vaccines from our supply to the COVAX scheme. • Launched a five-point plan at the UN General Assembly to protect the world from future pandemics. • Established an informal network of government, industry and academics to advise the G7 on accelerating the development and deployment of vaccines for new pathogens in future. • Offered our expertise in genome sequencing to support other countries in tracking new variants, building on the work of British researchers in sequencing 50% of the global database of coronavirus genomes. The findings of the UK’s Recovery Trial – the world’s largest clinical trial for COVID-19 treatments – have also prevented over a million deaths worldwide. 21. In strengthening our defence and security, and to play our part in burden-sharing with allies, we have: • Made the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War, exceeding NATO’s 2% spending guideline and strengthening our most important alliance. • Deployed 300 UK troops to Mali in December 2020 to support the UN’s peacekeeping mission, providing highly-specialised reconnaissance capability. • Increased funding for counter-terrorism (CT) policing and introduced new legislation to improve our tools for fighting terrorism and state threats, including the Covert Human Intelligence Source Act, the Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill and the National Security and Investment Bill. • Made a significant breakthrough in the fight against SOC in June 2020, when we infiltrated the encrypted communications of criminals under Operation Venetic – the UK’s largest ever law enforcement operation. • Disrupted cyber-attacks targeting vital national infrastructure, publicly attributing attacks to state actors where we had compelling evidence to do so. • Published a pioneering ethical framework in February 2021 to guide the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) by Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) across its missions – from tackling SOC to disrupting state‑based disinformation campaigns. • Demonstrated global leadership on reducing space threats, working with likeminded nations to deliver a UN General Assembly resolution that reshapes the international debate on threats to the space systems on which we rely. II. Overview 15