The business secretary also told a Sutton Trust event today that the government is in talks with banks to devise a loans system for postgraduates.

Meanwhile, Mr Cable entered the discussion of social mobility started by Sir John Major, the former Conservative prime minister.

¡°I¡¯m one of the few people in the Cabinet who didn¡¯t go to a top school and isn¡¯t a millionaire,¡± he said.

On postgraduate funding, he noted that there is no equivalent of the undergraduate funding system that provides support for loans and maintenance costs ¨C meaning the majority of postgraduates ¡°self finance¡±.

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¡°We do recognise that this is a significant barrier to social mobility,¡± said Mr Cable. ¡°We recognise it ¨C there¡¯s not a great deal we can do about it given the limited funding we have.¡±

He added: ¡°David Willetts [the universities and science minister] is meeting the banks to try to devise a loans scheme that will help people progress through postgraduate education.¡±

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Mr Cable also discussed the fact that an increasing number of professions are considering requiring entrants to hold a degree.

¡°The idea that in order to be a police officer or a nurse you need to have a degree ¨C that¡¯s just qualification inflation,¡± he said.

¡°You could argue there¡¯s some ultimately good things associated with it, but arguably not¡­That partly explains why 40 per cent of people go to university rather than the 10 per cent which¡­I experienced.

¡°There are a whole lot of very standard professions, not elite professions, where a degree is a basic qualification. We are conscious in some areas like accountancy and elsewhere that degree qualifications appear to be superfluous ¨C we¡¯re trying to persuade professional associations to address that.¡±

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Mr Cable also said: ¡°We still have a major problem of social mobility in the UK, much of it centred on higher education.¡±

But he continued that while the problem was particularly evident in the most selective universities, it was ¡°nothing to do with crude discrimination¡±.

Mr Cable also called for greater clarity in the use of the term ¡°social mobility¡±, suggesting it is currently used in a ¡°rather sloppy way¡±.

The business secretary said the most important day in his father¡¯s life was when the family moved from a terraced house to a semi-detached house. That kind of social mobility ¡°matters to millions and millions of people¡± and was more important than figures on how many Old Etonians are in the Cabinet, argued Mr Cable.

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john.morgan@tsleducation.com