Charles Clarke has attacked suggestions that the planned higher education access watchdog will mean an end to university admissions based on merit.

The proposals are set to be published in the next two or three weeks, detailing the powers of the regulator to decide whether universities are taking steps to attract working-class students.

Those that are found to have acceptable policies will be allowed to charge top-up fees of up to £3000 a year.

However the education secretary sought to play down recent suggestions that selection for higher education will no longer be based on a fair reward for achievement.

His intervention followed claims that Bristol University's policies provided for positive discrimination against middle-class students.

"What I can confirm is that the basis of access will be upon merit," Clarke told the Commons.

"What I want to reconfirm is that it is not careless talk in any way from the government that has caused this issue of discussion.

"It is a series of mis-statements, wrong views in particular attributed to Bristol University but also to other universities, which entirely wrongly describe the current admission practices of that university.

"A lot of the discussion and debate around this is actually wrongly informed and fundamentally incorrect."

He said that it was fair to look at both the merit of the applicant and their potential to benefit as a student.

"A great deal of academic research indicates that the capacity to benefit from university education goes even better from people who come by non-traditional routes in certain circumstances."

Clarke said that all students should be assessed on the basis of their "achievements, merits and talent".

The university access regulator would help to ensure that the "good work" that is done by some university admissions departments is done by all, the education secretary added.

But after higher education minister Margaret Hodge was forced to make a u-turn on targets for the numbers of working class students going into higher education, Liberal Democrat MP Vincent Cable attacked "careless talk" about access targets, quotas and benchmarks.

Cable sought assurances that the access watchdog "will not approve schemes based on post codes or parental occupation or accents or schools but concentrate on the academic merit of individual applicants".

Michael Jack, Conservative MP for Fylde, urged the government to give students "clear guidance" on how they would be judged for university admission.

"It is clear that however accurate or inaccurate reports about Bristol University have been, young people are now deeply troubled and confused about exactly how, under the government's new approach to higher education, their admission for university will be determined," he warned.