The government has told Oxford and Cambridge universities to admit more students from poor areas.

Minister for higher education, Margaret Hodge, said yesterday: "Our top universities must take a long, hard look at their student intake. They must hunt out bright, young people from disadvantaged areas."

Hodge, who is today seeing off the "Aim higher roadshow" which is a fleet of trailers travelling across the country to give students their first taste of higher education, went on to say: "Background, not potential, is having an undue influence on people's life chances."