Labour politician David Lammy has suggested Oxbridge give lower grade offers to working-class students in order to bridge the attainment gap, as he uncovered damning data which showed more children got into the prestigious universities from the Home Counties than from the whole of the North.

He made the point that very able students in lower-attaining schools may not be getting the 3 As which are a basic requirement for getting into Oxford.

Four-fifths of students accepted at Oxbridge between 2010 and 2015 had parents with top professional and managerial jobs, and the numbers are on the rise, and the share of offers from people in the top two social classes - which make up just over 30 per cent of the country - had their Oxbridge offers go up from 79% to 81% between 2010 and 2015.

Mr Lammy wrote in the Guardian: "At Cambridge, applicants from eight areas in the south of England received almost 5,000 offers, whereas students in eight local authority areas across the Midlands, the north and Wales received just eight.