The issue of racial and social inequality at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge has been highlighted in a recent inquiry into admissions figures, with over 20 Oxbridge colleges admitting no black undergraduates whatsoever last year.

The figures, revealed by Labour MP David Lammy under a Freedom of Information (FoI) request, showed that 11 Oxford and 10 Cambridge colleges made no offers to black students for the year beginning in October 2009.

The report comes in the wake of fears that the Government’s plan to raise annual tuition fees to £9000 may stifle access for students from ethnic minorities.

Writing in the Guardian on Monday, David Lammy noted how “the results of my inquiries into Oxford and Cambridge admissions over the last six months reveal a system in which getting a place remains a matter of being white, middle class and southern."

The figures acquired under the FoI Act also show a social divide, with 89% of Oxford admissions and 87.6% of Cambridge admissions coming from the top three socio-economic groups. The admissions body, UCAS, has previously stated that the average for universities in the UK is 64.5%.

Large parts of the country never send students to the top universities. Students from Richmond-upon-Thames received eight times as many Oxbridge offers in the last four years as those in Rochdale, Barnsley, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough and Stoke combined, and nearly the same number of offers from Oxford in the last five years as the whole of Scotland.

Racial problems were the most prominent, however, with just one black Briton of Caribbean descent successfully achieving a place at Oxford last year - and only six at Cambridge.

Leading American universities, in contrast, accept much higher percentages of black students. 14.5% of admissions to Columbia University this year were black students.

“If we go for this elite system of higher education … we have got to make sure what they are doing is fair,” said Rob Berkeley, director of the Runnymede Trust, a think-tank promoting racial equality.

“If you look at how many people on both frontbenches are Oxbridge-educated, Oxford and Cambridge are still the major route to positions of influence. If that's the case we shouldn't be restricting these opportunities to people from minority backgrounds.”

A spokeswoman for Oxford said that the cause was that black students apply disproportionately for the most oversubscribed subjects, with 44% of all black applicants applying for Oxford’s three most popular courses - economics, medicine and maths - compared with 17% of white applicants.

In Cambridge, the most prominent divide was at the all-women’s college, Newnham. Black applicants had a 13% success rate here compared with 67% for white students.

The FoI data confirmed that white students were more successful than their black counterparts at every Cambridge College except St Catharine’s, where black candidates had a 38% success rate and white students only 30%. Merton College, Oxford, meawhile, has admitted just three black students in the past ten years.

A spokesman for Cambridge said that 15% of students accepted last year were from minority backgrounds, adding: “Colleges make offers to the best and brightest students regardless of their background, and where variations exist this is due to supply of applications and demand by subject.”