This article is more than 9 months old

This article is more than 9 months old

Boris Johnson has served Christmas lunch to 850 British troops stationed in Estonia.

The prime minister took an RAF A330 plane for the one-day trip to the Baltic state on Saturday morning.

Johnson served turkey and Yorkshire puddings to troops from the Queen’s Royal Hussars at the Tapa military base near the capital, Tallinn, to thank them for their service.

The soldiers, along with personnel from Estonia, France and Denmark, lead the Nato battlegroup to protect Europe’s eastern border with Russia.

Johnson held a bilateral meeting with his Estonian counterpart, Jüri Ratas.

A Downing Street spokeswoman said: “The leaders discussed the close partnership between the UK and Estonia, in particular our joint security and defence cooperation. The prime minister reaffirmed the UK’s unconditional commitment to Estonia’s regional security through Nato.

“The two leaders discussed the need to work together to address shared global challenges and the prime minister invited prime minister Ratas to attend the COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow next year.”

During his visit, Johnson was asked if he would look at how the Ministry of Defence spends its money after the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, warned serving personnel to be braced for cutbacks as part of his effort to secure more long-term investment in defence.

Johnson said: “I’m a big supporter of our armed forces – I think they do a massive amount of good around the world. We’re the second biggest player in Nato, we’re the biggest military in Europe – we believe in supporting our armed services.

“Obviously we do that in an efficient way but as you know we’re increasing our budget by £2.2bn – you know about all the investments that we’re making in our armed services. Those will continue.”

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Political Thinking podcast, Wallace said the best thing [Boris Johnson] can do for the armed forces is to ensure “we cut our cloth to match our ambition, that manage expectations and say to the [service] chiefs that your appetite has to match your stomach”.

The cabinet minister added: “By doing so we build our credibility with the Treasury and No 10 to say: ‘Look, we have sorted out our house, when you give us some more money we will deliver on what we’re trying to do and there will be no tricks.’”

Wallace also confirmed reports that Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, will be involved in a reorganisation of defence procurement after the strategist wrote a number of scathing blogs about the MoD before joining the government.

He said: “Dom is full of amazing ideas where he has spotted loads of improvement in infrastructure and technology procurement and he has spotted how that as our technology horizon changes, how we procure has to happen differently and I am incredibly supportive of what he is talking about.”