Top universities must abandon their socially exclusive image and provide more support for poorer students if they want to convince the government's new access regulator that they should be allowed to increase tuition fees, Charles Clarke said yesterday.

The education secretary, educated at Cambridge himself, said: "I think Oxford and Cambridge should specifically be looking to a modern image of themselves, applying to the best and most talented people irrespective of social class.

"To that extent, the Brideshead Revisited image which Oxbridge sometimes transmits isn't appropriate for that modern age. It's 75 years out of date."

Damian Green, the shadow education secretary, accused Clarke of using "class-war rhetoric" against Britain's universities.