GORDON BROWN last night brought the ultra-Blairite Alan Milburn into his team with orders to challenge middle-class domination of “elitist” professions and the army.

In a move attacked by the Conservatives as an act of “class war”, the prime minister has appointed Milburn, the former health secretary, to a new role promoting social mobility.

Milburn is to chair a commission that will look at how to give young people from state schools a “fair crack of the whip” at becoming doctors, lawyers, senior army officers and top civil servants.

Writing in The Sunday Times today, Milburn claimed that too few youngsters from comprehensive schools were becoming lawyers, doctors or army officers.

“Birth not worth has become more and more a determinant of people’s life chances,” he said. “It cannot be right that bright young people find themselves unable to get on the professional career ladder.”

The decision by Milburn, who quit the cabinet in 2005, to join Brown’s senior team ends a vicious personal rift between the two Labour heavyweights that had lasted almost a decade.

Milburn’s review is the centrepiece of a long-awaited white paper on how to kick-start upward social mobility, which critics claim has stalled during Labour’s dozen years in power.

Milburn is expected to play a wider role to develop what Labour insiders call the “Laura Spence agenda” - a reference to the schoolgirl from a Tyne-side comprehensive who was championed by Brown when she was rejected by Oxford despite having top A-level grades.

Brown was accused of being motivated by class envy during the bitter row that ensued in 2000. His allies insisted that he has a genuinely passionate commitment to breaking down barriers in the professional and educational “establishment”.

Among the policies likely to be pursued are: Creating state-funded internships to help poorer graduates get on the first rung of the career ladder. Forcing the army to set up more cadet corps in comprehensive schools. Reforming the state school curriculum so children are taught debating and interview skills. Shaking up the career structure of professions such as the media and law where very low salaries for new recruits deter youngsters from poor backgrounds from applying for jobs.

The review will also look at cultural barriers such as the elaborate dining rituals of the Inns of Court and the “rugger bugger” atmosphere of top medical colleges.

Chris Grayling, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said: “This smacks of Gordon Brown’s love of class war. It is also about internal Labour party politics rather than a genuine desire to tackle social mobility. The government itself admits the problem of social mobility is about educational failure and family breakdown. This is just a gimmick.”

Alison Wolf, professor of public sector management at King’s College London, joined the attack on Labour. “They [the government] hate the professions, not because they are hives of privilege but because they are independent of government,” she said.

Milburn insisted that the new commission had nothing to do with class war. He said that his aim was to increase the “numbers of our citizens who can aspire to a middle-class lifestyle”.

He ruled out any form of “positive discrimination” that would set lower benchmarks for poorer job applicants.

However, he also pointed out: “Of our country’s top barristers, 7 in 10 went to private schools compared with just 1 in 10 who went to state comprehensives.

“A similar pattern affects careers in medicine, the senior civil service and the senior ranks of the armed services as well as those in the media, the arts and academia.

“Financial obstacles, cultural barriers, recruitment practices and scholarship and internship shortages all contribute to narrowing the recruitment base of these key - and growing - professions.”

The social mobility white paper will contain statistics backing up his claims about the state of Britain’s top professions. Of the 10 most senior officers in each of the three branches of the armed forces, nine in the army, six in the Royal Navy and three in the RAF were privately educated.

Three out of 10 applicants to medical and dental schools have parents with higher managerial and professional occupations - twice the rate of university applicants as a whole.

Research by the Sutton Trust, a social mobility charity, suggests the professions have done little to open themselves up over the past two decades.

It looked at 500 of the elite in 2007 and 500 a generation ago in politics, law, journalism, medicine and business.

Despite two decades of Thatcherism, new Labour and comprehensive education, the professions seem to have ossified: 53% of today’s leaders went to public school, down just five points from 58% a generation before.

The professional bodies admit that more needs to be done to attract a wider range of applicants.

Geoffrey Vos, a former chairman of the Bar Council who will sit on Milburn’s commission, has introduced initiatives to send senior barristers on courses to ensure they do not instinctively plump for recruits who they think will “fit in”.

“The most talented people do not come from a monolithic background,” said Vos.

“The bar is an object lesson. There are a lot of people from privileged backgrounds . . . people tend to select people built in a similar image.”

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