British prime minister Theresa May to pledge investment into R&D

“It is going to be a really tough ask”.

Mr Davis said: “I want to begin the work of ensuring we have positive, strong, and productive relationship with our closest neighbours”.

The clock is already ticking as banks based in London finalise plans to potentially shift some operations to other European countries so they can still serve EU customers.

The other 27 members of the European Union have insisted that if Britain wants to curb immigration – a central tenet of the campaign to leave – then it won’t get access to the EU’s single market.

In her first speech to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) annual conference, the Prime Minister will stress her “aim” for the United Kingdom to maintain its status as having the lowest corporation tax rate in the G20 group of countries.

He said the timing of indyref2 is “up in the air”, but added: “Prospects are higher of a referendum mostly because the May Government apparently has zero plans and no exit strategy”.

However, she has changed her tone in the past week, stressing on two occasions that a deal will be struck quickly.

“Therefore the question is: what is it and what does it apply to?”

With analysts saying that Britain faces slower growth next year after voting to leave the European Union in a referendum in June, May wants to kickstart the economy to help those she has described as “just managing” and who largely voted in favour of Brexit.

The two-year negotiation period after Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty is triggered will be focused on the task of leaving the European Union, with new trade arrangements unlikely to have been put in place.

“People don’t want a cliff edge, they want to know how things are going to go forward”, the prime minister said, shortly after business leaders warned her about the impact of an abrupt departure from the 28-nation bloc.

Theresa May has been warned by European politicians and experts that seeking a transitional Brexit deal with the EU would be “fiendishly difficult”.

Mr Verhofstadt said it would be a “tough period, very intense”.

Mrs May promised to shake-up governance as part of her Conservative Party leadership campaign in July, and repeated the promise at last month’s party conference when she said she planned to have “not just consumers represented on company boards, but workers as well”. “You do it in a very carefully coordinated and managed process”.

A Government source told the Telegraph it was still too soon to say if a deal would be done.

The Cabinet minister held talks with the European Parliament’s Brexit chief Guy Verhofstadt and other senior MEPs in Strasbourg, but there was frustration in Strasbourg over the lack of clear information coming from the Government.