BRITAIN’S economy faces a post-Brexit slowdown but could come through it stronger, a minister responsible for international trade has told the Daily Echo.

Lord Price, former managing director of Waitrose and a resident of Dorset, spent a day in the county talking to businesses.

He visited Poole’s luxury yacht builder Sunseeker, Sturminster Newton kitchenware retailer Harts of Stur and Dorset Local Enterprise Partnership, as well as hosting a round-table meeting of business people.

As minister of state at the Department for International Trade, he is one of the team responsible for shaping Britain’s business future outside the European Union.

“My responsibility now is to set up the trade negotiation team for our free trade agreement with the rest of the world, understanding what would make it easier or harder to export,” he said.

He acknowledged that businesses were keen to know when Britain would be leaving the EU and on what terms.

“I just talk about the process that we’ll go through with setting up a ‘Drexit’ department – a Department for Exiting the EU. That can be done over the course of the next few months or so. Papers are being prepared for the new prime minister on the negotiations. We will aim to do the very best we can for British business,” he said.

“We’re the number one investment centre for worldwide investment. We want it will to be a great place to come and corporation tax has been cut already. We want to strike free trade agreements with the rest of the world as well as the best possible relationship with the EU. At the moment it’s all about our intent to be an open, free trade nation. We’ll work through the detail,” he said.

Lord Price’s visit coincided with the release of Markit’s Purchasing Managers’ Index, which showed its weakest readings since April 2009 and saw declining output and orders. A markets analyst at ETX Capital said the figures suggested the UK was “heading for a recession”.

Lord Price said: “Everybody has said there will be a slowdown. The International Monetary Fund came out and said growth will fall. But having said that, they also said our growth will be higher than any other European country and that we will be able to grow.

“I think what we’re talking about is a relative performance rather than an absolute performance. We’re in a period where people are very uncertain and still there may be a loss of confidence but the UK economy is really strong.

“We do have sufficient money, the Bank of England governor has made it clear that we can invest if we need to invest. The chancellor has made it clear that we’re going to reduce corporation tax that we’re going to look at different ways in which we can invest and back British business.”

He pointed said China was particularly keen to invest in the UK, with the Dalian Wanda group – the owner of Sunseeker – buying the Odeon & UCI Cinema Group for £921million shortly after the Brexit vote.

He said the referendum result had been a “bump” which created “a bit of uncertainty”.

Setting up the department for Brexit would take two or three months, he suggested.

“I would have thought by the end of this year, they’ll all have organised themselves in a better place to think about what we’re expecting to negotiate for and how we’re going to do it.

“Then we’ll start the firm process at some point after that.”

He said he had been impressed by Sunseeker’s order book and by Harts of Stur, “who have built a pretty impressive export business over the past few years”.

“I know Dorset well. I live in Dorset and having run Waitrose, there are lots of shops and lots of suppliers to Waitrose in Dorset. People need to get things in proportion. We’re talking about a slowdown, with slower economic growth than we might have and otherwise. Nobody’s predicting at the moment that there will be a full-blown recession,” he said.

“The next two to three years are going to be filed with a degree of uncertainty as we negotiate our positions and settle down to a new reality. If we were to take a three to five year view I think there’s the potential for quite a lot of new free trade deals and relationships with Europe that are going to be on a surer footing.”

In five to 10 years, new opportunities would emerge, he said.

“We’re not going to fall off a cliff tomorrow – it’s working those things through.”