International trade secretary Liam Fox says business leaders have no appetite for the deals and exports needed to survive after the vote for Brexit

Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, has launched an attack on Britain for “growing fat and lazy”, making it ill-prepared for the business deals that need to be done after leaving the EU.

Fox, a former GP and staunch Eurosceptic, suggested business executives would rather be playing golf on a Friday afternoon than negotiating export deals.

He made the remarks, first reported by the Times, at a Conservative Way Forward event for business leaders in parliament.

“If you want to share in the prosperity of our country, you have a duty to contribute to the prosperity of our country,” he said. “This country is not the free-trading nation that it once was. We have become too lazy, and too fat on our successes in previous generations.

“What is the point of us reshaping global trade, what is the point of us going out and looking for new markets for the United Kingdom, if we don’t have the exporters to fill those markets?”

He added: “We’ve got to change the culture in our country. People have got to stop thinking about exporting as an opportunity and start thinking about it as a duty – companies who could be contributing to our national prosperity but choose not to because it might be too difficult or too time-consuming or because they can’t play golf on a Friday afternoon.”

Fox resigned as defence secretary from David Cameron’s government over questions about access given to his friend and unofficial adviser Adam Werritty.

However, Theresa May gave him the post of international trade secretary in her new government as one of several high-profile Eurosceptics handed responsibility for dealing with the fallout of the vote to leave the EU.

In comments that appear at odds with May’s stated commitment to an active industrial policy, Fox also argued: “We must turn our backs on [those] that tell us: it’s OK, you can protect bits of your industry, bits of your economy and no one will notice. It is untrue.

“Protectionism has always ended in tears. We must be unreconstructed, unapologetic free traders.”

A Downing Street spokesman did not endorse Fox’s remarks, saying: “The principle behind our approach is to ensure British businesses can succeed in the world.”

Fox also indicated more emphasis would be placed in future on exports, in contrast to the previous government’s focus on attracting foreign investment.

“Up until the change of government, the policy was to get as much foreign direct investment into the United Kingdom as possible, but to largely ignore overseas direct investment elsewhere.

“And that’s a problem because it’s great the year we get the foreign investment and we get jobs created, but every year after that all their income flows go to their parent companies.”