The Labour party should set up a fund to help people on low incomes become MPs, the frontrunner for the party’s leadership has said.

Jeremy Corbyn said Labour’s members of parliament needed to be drawn from people who were facing the brunt of government policy so that they would understand what was at stake.

The diversity fund would help party members in the top 100 target seats from working class backgrounds with selection costs, which the Corbyn campaign says can amount to as much as £4,500.

“If the party is to win back the five million predominantly working-class voters lost since 1997, then we must reflect those we seek to represent. It is not enough to be for working people – we have to be of working people as well,” the candidate argued.

“Because if at the next election we as a party have hardly any candidates from the frontline of Tory cuts then it will be very hard to be heard by voters we need to win back.

Jeremy Corbyn is the only leadership candidate not to attend an Oxbridge university (PA; Getty Images)

“It is therefore only right that the party helps collectively to shoulder some of the financial burden of members on more modest incomes during the candidate selection process so that we remain the people’s party.”

The Corbyn campaign says that around 12 per cent of current Labour MPs went to private school, and that this is more than the number who come from manual working class backgrounds.

Labour faced a number of controversies during the previously parliament about complicated relationship with class.

In one episode, shadow cabinet member Emily Thornberry tweeted a picture of a white van outside a house flying England flags, a posting some people interpreted as derogatory or snobbish.

Then leader Ed Miliband appeared to compound the party’s sense of detachment after he said he felt “respect” upon seeing a white van.

Labour leadership: The Contenders Show all 4 1 /4 Labour leadership: The Contenders Labour leadership: The Contenders Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn started off as the rank outsider in the race to replace Ed Miliband and admitted he was only standing to ensure the left of the party was given a voice in the contest. But the Islington North MP, who first entered Parliament in 1983, is now the firm favourite to be elected Labour leader on September 12 after a surge in left-wing supporters signing up for a vote. PA Labour leadership: The Contenders Liz Kendall Liz Kendall has been labelled the Blairite candidate throughout the contest, which partly explains why she has failed to attract the support needed in a party that has drifted even further from the centre-ground of British politics since the election. She has faced criticism over her relative lack of experience, having only served as an MP since 2010 and having no experience of ministerial or shadow cabinet roles. But that very lack of experience allowed her to initially make a pitch as the only candidate offering real change and a real break from the Blair/Brown/Miliband years, until Jeremy Corbyn entered the race and shifted the whole debate to the left. She is set to finish a disappointing fourth. PA Labour leadership: The Contenders Andy Burnham Andy Burnham started out as the front-runner in the leadership election, seen as the candidate of the left until Jeremy Corbyn entered the race. The former Cabinet minister has found himself squeezed between the growing populism of Corbyn’s radical agenda and the moderate, centre-left Yvette Cooper, not knowing which way to turn. It has attracted damaging labels such as ‘flip-flop Andy’, most notably over his response to the Government’s Welfare Bill. He remains hopeful he can win enough second preference votes to take him over the 50 per cent threshold ahead of Corbyn. PA Labour leadership: The Contenders Yvette Cooper.jpg Yvette Cooper has put her experience and achievements in government at the heart of her offer to the Labour party. She played a key part in setting up Sure Start in Tony Blair’s government and has pledged to continue her record on delivering for young families by promising a “revolution in the way families are supported” by introducing universal free childcare. She has also championed her role as a full-time working mother, taking pride in telling audiences that she does the school run for the kids before her day starts as a politician. But she has been criticised for being too wooden and lacking in passion and her attacks on Liz Kendall for “swallowing the Tory manifesto” at the start of the leadership contest have been criticised for helping Jeremy Corbyn brand all three mainstream candidates as ‘Tory-lite’. PA

Labour's former policy chief Jon Cruddas has previously accused New Labour of assuming that working class voters had "nowhere else to go" while the party's politicos targeted a wealthy "middle England".

Research published in June found that politics was not the only area people from working class backgrounds were discriminated against.

The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission said there was a “poshness test” for business roles that favoured people from private and grammar schools.