Tony Blair's government is adopting "elitist" policies for health and education, Frank Dobson has claimed.

The former health secretary has launched a wide ranging attack on plans to promote diversity among schools and hospitals.

In an article for the Observer, Dobson also took an apparent swipe at Andrew Adonis - the former Oxford don who now heads Number 10's policy unit and whose support for university top-up fees is thought to have contributed to Estelle Morris's resignation.

"Unfortunately, among the shadowy ranks of the government's advisers are beneficiaries of an elitist education, whose policy initiatives perpetuate and exacerbate the inequalities of the English education system," he wrote.

In a wide ranging critique of the "elitism" at the heart of key Labour policies, the former Cabinet minister said the government should be trying to repeat the success of its polices for primary education, where the gap between the best and worst performing schools is narrowing.

He admitted that the government has ploughed extra resources into the comprehensive sector.

"But while the more successful schools are being helped to develop yet further and faster with extra money teachers, power, prestige and partial selection, how can the weaker ones ever catch up?"

Turning to higher education, Dobson said the idea of top-up fees would be "another elitist solution".

"Badly-off students are already under-represented in the more prestigious institutions. Top-up fees are likely to make matters worse," he argued.

But his criticisms were dismissed by the higher education minister, Margaret Hodge. "Sameness is not actually the answer to equality of opportunity," she said.

"We will ensure that the universities are properly funded and that there's an appropriate balance between the contribution from individuals, their families and the state," Hodge told Sky News' Sunday with Adam Boulton programme.

Dobson went on to warn that "now the elitists have started shaping the government's health policies".

He labelled plans to create foundation hospitals - which would be given extra freedoms in return for performing well - as "profoundly elitist".

He said that a "small elite" of just 12 hospitals at the outset will "be singled out for special privileges and extra resources".

"The elitists justify giving advantages to foundation hospitals on the grounds of 'earned autonomy'. In other words, the hospitals deserve it.

"But this displays an obsession with institutions rather than the people they are there to serve. Whatever the hospitals deserve, no patients deserve to see their local hospital put at a disadvantage."

Dobson also warned that the policies could have damaging electoral consequences for the government.

"No Labour MP fought the last election on a promise of a two-tier system with 12 hospitals in the top tier.

"At the next election, only a dozen Labour MPs will be able to boast their hospitals are in the top tier. The rest will have to explain why theirs are not," he wrote.