Gordon Brown said on Monday the Treasury has allocated an additional £580m, taking the total cost of the war in Iraq to nearly £4bn.

The new spending, the bulk of which will go to Iraq, takes the total cost of foreign wars and peacekeeping missions this year to £980m, compared with the nearly £1.1bn that was spent last year. All told, the amount Britain has spent on military operations since 2002, when the build-up for Iraq began and the bulk of military spending in Afghanistan occurred, is £4.9bn.