More than 40% of the most influential people in Britain went to independent school, according to research which has further highlighted concerns about their disproportionate impact in fields ranging from finance to the arts.

The Debrett’s 500 also found that around a fifth of people on the list, which is split into 24 categories, attended grammar schools, leaving just over a third who attended comprehensives.

Publication of the list – which includes established figures such as Tony Blair and Richard Branson as comedian Russell Brand, author Hilary Mantel and YouTube star Zoe Sugg aka Zoella – comes hot on the heels of a row over comments by the shadow culture minister, Chris Bryant, in which he complained of the arts being dominated by people from privileged background lsuch as “Eddie Redmayne and James Blunt and their ilk”. His comments attracted the ire of Blunt, who branded Bryant a “classist gimp”. Redmayne makes the stage and screen section of the Debrett’s list, which also includes his fellow Old Etonian Damian Lewis, and Benedict Cumberbatch, who attended Harrow school. They rub shoulders with the likes of 12 Years a Slave director, Steve McQueen, who has said he was told at his west London comprehensive school that he would never be anything more than a plumber.

David Cameron, another Old Etonian, failed for the second year running to make the politics category, headed by former Tory donor Lord Ashcroft, but Boris Johnson, the prime minister’s contemporary at the Berkshire school and potential successor as Conservative leader, does appear.

The Debrett’s 500 list includes, from top left, the Prince of Wales, Russell Brand, vlogger-turned-author Zoella, Tony Blair, Sir Richard Branson, actors Eddie Redmayne and Idris Elba, F1 driver Lewis Hamilton, presenter Clare Balding, singers Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith and digital enterpreneur Jamal Edwards. Photograph: PA

For the latest annual list, the second to be published, Debrett’s asked people about their education background. Of the 265 who responded, 113 said they had been to a fee-paying school, 96 attended a state comprehensive and 56 went to grammar school. More than half of those who responded in the sections listing entrepreneurs, business and industry and finance, went to private schools.

The section with the highest proportion of individuals who said they went to state schools (70%) was sport, although no 1 in the section, television presenter Clare Balding, attended an independent school. David Beckham, who attended Chingford Foundation school in Essex, was second. As well as state school pupils, women are also underrepresented on the list, taking 147 places, although they topped nine of the 24 categories, including books - children’s laureate Malorie Blackman - and business and industry – Karen Brady.

Debrett’s chief executive Joanne Milner said: “The Debrett’s 500 includes people from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds but there’s work to be done if future lists are to be increasingly diverse and meritocratic. Sadly, all the figures show that Britain is becoming less meritocratic. As a young person growing up in Britain today, you have a far greater chance of succeeding if you come from a privileged background and have inherited a rich social capital.”

Lee Elliot Major, chief executive of the Sutton Trust, which targets educational inequality, said: “Britain’s most influential positions remain the preserve of the privileged few and the independently educated still dominate public life. Levels of social mobility are still shockingly low in this country and we must do more to ensure that every young person can achieve his or her potential, regardless of their family background. Access to our leading universities and top professions needs to be based on ability, not ability to pay.”

Debrett’s, known for its guides to etiquette and Britain’s most influential figures, last year launched the Foundation, a development programme established to deliver training and networks to academic achievers from less privileged backgrounds.