Lord Alan Sugar has been appointed the government’s Enterprise Tsar – for the second time.

The Apprentice presenter and Amstrad founder, who held the post in Gordon Brown’s Labour government in 2009 , will now fulfil the same role for the Conservative administration.

He will be tasked by Prime Minister David Cameron with championing enterprise and encouraging firms around the UK to take on more apprentices.

Lord Sugar said he was “delighted” with his new job. "Not enough of our young people know about apprenticeships and what they offer,” he said, “and too few feel empowered to set up their own business".

While working under Gordon Brown seven years ago, he said that the then government lacked the input of people who have relevant first-hand experience. “They are what they are, they're civil servants. They've never actually been in business,” adding, “the recession makes enterprise more important than ever.”

The peer announced last year that he was leaving Labour because of his “disillusionment” with the party, saying: "Labour offers no route out of recession.". He cited the party’s shift to the left, “moving back towards what Old Labour stood for", and anti-business approach ahead of the general election in May 2015 as his main reasons for his resignation. He said that party chiefs “had been aware of my disillusionment for some time”.