Britain's youngest terrorist has been sentenced to a least five years in custody for plotting an Anzac Day terror attack in Australia.

Over the course of nine days in March this year the then 14-year-old boy took on the role of "organiser and adviser" to an alleged Australian jihadist in a plot to murder police officers by beheading in Melbourne the following month.

The youngster, from Blackburn, Lancashire, exchanged more than 3,000 encrypted mobile app messages with 18-year-old Sevdet Besim after he became swiftly radicalised by online Islamic State propaganda.

A "major terrrorist plot in its late stages" was thwarted when authorities in Britain and Australia intervened and Besim was arrested in possession of a knife a week before the annual war remembrance event.

The youngster, now aged 15, was given a life sentence at Manchester Crown Court and told he would serve at least five years.