TONY BLAIR and David Cameron may be on opposing sides at the dispatch box, but both belong to the same elite club in the House of Commons, according to a study published today.

The Labour and Conservative leaders are among the one in three MPs who were educated at private schools, nearly five times the national average.

The research by the Sutton Trust, an educational charity, also found that one in four MPs is a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge. Mr Cameron was educated at Eton and Oxford, and Mr Blair went to Oxford from Fettes College in Edinburgh, often described as the “Eton of the North”.

The trust, which promotes social mobility, said that its report showed that our parliamentary representatives were unrepresentative of the public.

Just 7 per cent of Britons were educated privately, yet 32 per cent of MPs went to fee-paying schools. A further 25 per cent attended selective grammars, and 42 per cent went to comprehensives. Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the trust, said: “This is symptomatic of a wider issue — the educational apartheid which blights our system and which offers the best life chances to those who can afford to pay for their schooling.”

Mr Cameron deflected comments about his privileged upbringing during the Tory leadership campaign, but most of his Shadow team seem to have had a similarly fortunate start in life: 19 of the 35 MPs appointed last week were educated privately, including the Shadow Chancellor George Osborne (St Paul’s). Oliver Letwin, Director of Policy, Hugo Swire, Shadow Culture Secretary, and Boris Johnson, Shadow Higher Education Minister, are all old Etonians, like their leader.

Of the sixteen members of Mr Cameron’s team educated at state schools, only six went to comprehensives and ten to selective grammars.

The Government is unrepresentative of the population and of Labour MPs as a whole, according to the trust. A quarter of ministers enjoyed a private school education, compared with 16 per cent of backbench Labour MPs.

Ministers and shadow ministers are also more likely to be Oxbridge graduates than their backbench colleagues.

The proportion from public schools is 62 per cent in the House of Lords. Almost a third of the 391 privately educated peers went to just five schools, with 82 from Eton, 11 from Winchester, and 10 each from Harrow, Westminster, and Stowe.

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