Britain announced on Tuesday it would purge Huawei equipment from 5G by the end of 2027, with Trump saying hours later that: "We convinced many countries, many countries, I did this myself for the most part, not to use Huawei, because we think it is an unsafe security risk, it's a big security risk."

Asked about the remark, British Health Secretary Matt Hancock told Sky News: "Well we all know Donald Trump don't we."

"All sorts of people can try to claim credit for the decision but this was based on a technical assessment by the National Cyber Security Centre about how we could have the highest quality 5G systems in the future," he said.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Sarah Young; editing by Michael Holden)