Rebel Labour MPs will launch a fresh challenge tonight to Tony Blair and his plans for greater choice in schools.

Lord Kinnock, the former Labour leader, and Estelle Morris, the former Education Secretary, will take a public platform in the House of Commons to launch a pamphlet opposing the Prime Minister's plans for trust schools which they say will allow selection by ability to creep back into the state system.

The leaflet is co-authored by the former Downing Street adviser Fiona Millar, who is the partner of Alastair Campbell, and by Melissa Benn, sister of Hilary Benn, the International Development Secretary. It argues against selection in schools and in favour of comprehensive education.

"In a truly modernised, well-funded, well-supported comprehensive system, quality can co-exist with equality," state Ms Millar and Ms Benn in the pamphlet A Comprehensive Future - Equality and Equality for all our Children.

And they ask "whether having an unshakeable belief in diversity and choice can really create a system that is fair to all parents and children while giving equal opportunities and rising standards for all".

Labour traditionalists fear that more selection will lead to a return of the days when, they say, the bright minority went to grammar schools and the less able majority were "abandoned" in "sink" schools.

Some 70 Labour MPs have already signed up to an Alternative White Paper that would rein back some of the reforms envisaged by Mr Blair and Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary - enough to overturn the Government’s 65-seat majority in the House of Commons if they all rebelled.

One of the signatories, the former Home Office minister John Denham, said that the White Paper was not all bad. "There is consensus in favour of radical measures to challenge those schools that are failing to deliver for their pupils, and to confront those LEAs that are not standing up to the problem of under-performing schools," he said.

"But there is clear opposition to proposals that could see some schools deciding to develop in ways that may directly harm children in other schools and who may already be amongst the most disadvantaged."

Ms Kelly says that plans in the White Paper to allow state schools to take greater control of their own affairs will not include allowing them to select their pupils by ability. The plans do however allow that a growing number of specialist schools will be able to choose 10 per cent by "aptitude" in subjects like music and sport.

Critics say that allowing schools to escape local education authority control will lead to head teachers reintroducing selection by the back door, as educated middle-class parents seek to get places for their children at the most successful schools.

The new Tory leader David Cameron has already made political capital out of the fact that trust schools are also dangerously similar to the Conservatives' grant maintained schools, which Labour abolished when they came to power.

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