The Government’s enterprise adviser quit today following his controversial comments on the recession.

Lord Young of Graffham issued an apology after saying in an interview that people would look back on the recession and ''wonder what all the fuss was about''.

He also said low interest rates meant home-owners were up to £600 a month better off thanks to the ''so-called recession''.

Lord Young dismissed the 100,000 job cuts expected each year in the public sector as being ''within the margin of error'' in the context of a 30 million-strong workforce.

Complaints about spending cuts came from ''people who think they have a right for the state to support them''.

''For the vast majority of people in the country today, they have never had it so good ever since this recession - this so-called recession - started, because anybody, most people with a mortgage who were paying a lot of money each month, suddenly started paying very little each month,'' he said.

He offered his resignation to Prime Minister David Cameron today and that has been accepted.

Earlier shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Angela Eagle urged the Prime Minister to sack the peer.

She said Lord Young had demonstrated ''complete indifference'' to people's fears about the economy.

Unite leader Tony Woodley said Lord Young, a cabinet minister in Margaret Thatcher's government, had ''let the mask slip'' with his ''Thatcherite claptrap''.