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The government’s Enterprise Champion has accused small businesses of being “moaners”, due to their complaints about getting access to finance to help them through the recession.

Lord Alan Sugar, more often known as ‘Sir Alan’ from his role on television show The Apprentice, made his comments at a conference for small businesses in Manchester.

"I can honestly say a lot of problems you hear from people who are moaning are from companies I would not lend a penny to," stated Lord Sugar.

"They are bust. The moaners are bust. They are bust and they don't need the bank - they need an insolvency practitioner."

He also commented that younger entrepreneurs had unrealistic expectations about obtaining finance, as they "have lived in the unrealistic Disney World in the way banks dished out money".

Small business groups have reacted with anger to the remarks, with spokespersons from the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) and the Forum for Private Business (FPB) speaking out in defence of small firms.

"Sir Alan's comments were quite insensitive and completely erroneous on several points" said Phil Orford, Chief Executive of the FPB.

"Contrary to Sir Alan's comments about younger entrepreneurs harbouring unrealistic expectations about credit, I can tell him that many of our members are similar in age to him – they are in their fifties and sixties and they have lived through several recessions.

"Yet they are still deeply unhappy with the restrictive lending conditions and the increased lending costs which have been imposed on them over the past 12 months.

"Secondly, his view that banks should be free to do what they please and shouldn't be lectured to by the Government misses the point.

"The financial bail-out used a vast amount of taxpayers' cash and we will all be paying the price for years to come through higher taxes and public spending cuts. So it's not surprising if business owners feel as though they should be seeing a little more support from the very institutions they helped to save from collapse."

Sir Alan Sugar was made Lord Alan Sugar in 2009 so that he could join the government as their Enterprise Champion, looking after the interests of SMEs.