The public sector’s right hand often doesn’t know what its left hand is doing, the government's outspoken enterprise adviser has warned.

The government's ‘enterprise champion’, who this week ran into trouble over his description of small firms as "moaners", expressed his frustration when he appeared at Civil Service World’s regulatory reform conference last month.

In a question-and-answer session with the audience of civil servants and regulators, Lord Sugar revealed that he wants to see a “rehash” of the Business Link website, because it is so complicated that “you’d have to be a brain surgeon to find anything”.

But one audience member told the peer that there is a very easy-to-use website covering regulatory issues for new businesses, called ERWIN (Everything Regulation, Whenever It’s Needed), which provides a list of regulations they must deal with, organised by sector and ranked by importance.

Lord Sugar, who has been visiting businesses and talking to policy officials and ministers in recent months, expressed surprise that he had never been told about the site: “I stand here as someone who has been to all the Business Link centres in the country and I did not hear about that. Why don’t I, or all these executives at Business Link, know about that?”

The ERWIN site (www.everything regulation.org.uk) is run by EETSA, a partnership of 11 local authority trading standards departments in the East of England.

Lord Sugar said he regularly discovers that one part of government does not know what another part is doing. “I find this a lot: I come up with an idea and then I find out it’s already being done,” he said.

There were “departments in departments” and the result was “the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing”, he added.

The peer also told the audience of regulators that the owners of small businesses are "too lazy" to keep track of what new regulations might affect them (but quickly qualified that comment by saying they may be "too busy").

He told the audience: “It isn’t the regulators’ fault. People are so busy with their businesses that they can’t be bothered to become familiar with it.”

Controversy

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has already called for the straight-talking peer to be sacked over his attitude to small businesses. He is said to have called some of the small firms he has met as he has travelled around the country "moaners" who are living in "Disney World".

FSB chairman John Wright said on Wednesday that a number of small companies had contacted his organisation to complain about Lord Sugar's comments at various business meetings.

"Despite being appointed by the government to champion business in the UK, Lord Sugar seems to have no grasp of the hard work small businesses do and the role they play in employing six in 10 of the country's private sector work force.

"Members of the FSB have been in touch to complain about Lord Sugar's recent performances around the country and we have to call for his resignation from his position.

"We urge the prime minister to appoint someone with a greater understanding of the small business sector."

Responding, Lord Sugar said his words have been taken out of context and insisted that he believes that small and medium businesses are "the lifeblood of the economy, and I am committed to advocating their interests to government".

He added: "Having met thousands of small business owners across the country in recent weeks, my advice has mainly been greeted with appreciation.

"People might not always like what I say, but I tell it how I see it and that seems to be useful to most people."