Britain has evidence that Russian agencies tried to interfere in the 2019 general election, the Prime Minister has told the United Nations General Assembly, as he tasked the country’s security chiefs with building a new National Centre for Information Defence.

Andy Burnham used his first address to the assembly, delivered in New York on Monday evening, to set out what he described as an industrial-scale assault by hostile actors on the information environment in Britain and among its allies.

He said: “Russian agencies have used every means at their disposal to spread lies and disinformation and prey on people’s fears. They’ve used bots and fake websites. Falsified newspaper articles. Forged the branding of 28 British organisations, including universities and the BBC. They’ve amplified far right narratives. And we have evidence that they tried to interfere with the 2019 General Election.”

He added that Russian agencies had also tried to stoke tensions and unrest in the wake of what he called horrific events, saying the idea that anyone would use such things to their advantage is repulsive but is what they do.

Putting a figure on the effort, the Prime Minister said the Kremlin spends around £1.3 billion each year on manipulating information, describing “an insidious campaign that reaches into people’s homes and twists what they feel about their own country and community, creating a narrative of decline, stoking division and sowing despair. We have tiptoed around this for too long. Over the last decade we have given too much ground to those who want to run a negative, corrosive narrative about life in Britain, which bears no resemblance to reality. Well, no more.”

He then announced a new body, to be built by the security services, with three functions attached to it. “Today I am tasking our security chiefs to begin work on a new National Centre for Information Defence, to detect, attribute and disrupt these kinds of hostile state information attacks. To support and defend our democracy,” he said.

Governments have generally been slower to name the source of an information operation than to acknowledge a cyber intrusion, partly because the evidence is circumstantial and partly because saying so publicly invites a demand to act on it.

Mr Burnham linked the threat directly to conditions at home, saying that someone struggling with the cost of living, or a young person not in employment, education or training, would be more vulnerable to that kind of influence, and that “faced with this information warfare, security starts in every home”.

Britain intends to share what it has learned with others facing the same problem, and the Prime Minister said the country had already supported Moldova in protecting its elections from Russian interference, and that with more elections approaching across Europe it stands ready to share its understanding of how these actors work and how they can be countered.

Cyber attacks on British companies and institutions were cited alongside the information campaign, with Mr Burnham warning that artificial intelligence will multiply the threat.

The commitment is part of a considerable body of work already under way across government, with ministers having committed to rewriting the War Books by the end of the year under an accelerated Home Defence Programme, and a national resilience public awareness campaign is due to launch later this year, while the Defence Secretary told the Commons this month that he would report back to Parliament with plans for a national conversation about the threats the country faces.