Lord Sugar has dismissed the bosses of struggling businesses as “moaners” who “live in Disneyland”.

The star of The Apprentice said that 85 per cent of small firms that applied for bank loans did not deserve to receive any funds. What many companies needed, he added, was not a bank to lend them cash but a bankruptcy adviser.

Speaking in Manchester at a session to “champion the causes of viable small companies with banks”, he also accused the Government of sending out the wrong message by calling on high street banks to lend money to business after ministers had bailed them out with taxpayers’ money.

Lord Sugar, who is the Government’s Enterprise Champion, said: “I hate the use of this word cashflow in the sense in that it is a business problem. Banks are there to do business. Anyone who says they are not are wrong.

“I can honestly say a lot of problems you hear from people who are moaning are from companies I wouldn’t lend a penny to.”

He told the audience of 300: “The problem is that some younger people who have lived through the last ten years or so of business — and prior to that ten years they may have just come from education — they think the irresponsible manner in which the banks dealt is the norm. Let me tell you, you lived in the Disneyworld, you have lived in the unrealistic Disneyworld in the way banks dished out money.

“I have been in this position of advising the Government since June of this year and I have listened to a lot of the business link centres.

“In doing so I have insisted on meeting the business advisers and listened to the advice they are giving. On top of the list of complaints was banks: ‘The bank won’t do, this the bank won’t do that.’

“Don’t just talk to me in inverted commas about ‘banks being horrible and nasty.’ Regretfully, when we delve into some examples of the companies that have gone to them saying lend me some money I wouldn’t lend them one penny.

“They are bust. The moaners are bust. They are bust and they don’t need the bank — they need an insolvency practitioner.

“In difficult times you tend to get this level of complaints of one particular sector. I would look at you right in the eyes and tell you out of a hundred complaints, on investigation I would say 15 of them had something to moan about.”

Lord Sugar's remarks provoked condemnation among the audience. One delegate said to applause: “I am going to walk away from here a little bit depressed. There could have a bit more enthusiasm here. There’s been lot of a negativity.”

A spokesman for the Federation of Small Businesses, which has 215,000 members, said afterwards: “Most small companies live in the real world not Disneyworld and they lie at the heart of our economy.

“They are not moaners and the fact is they are working hard in difficult times and they need help from our banks. The Government was absolutely right to tell the banks to lend money to businesses and those small companies should be encouraged to grow.”

Lord Sugar had hit out after another delegate told him how four banks had refused to lend him money to help develop a new product to take to hospital wards because of cashflow difficulties.

Albert Goldberg, whose Blackpool-based company Glomania supplies luminous and invisible paint, urged him to tell ministers to open a special “Government bank” to help out small to medium-sized firms.

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