The prime minister Sir Keir Starmer has come under fire for “pretending” he was educated at a state school.

Sir Peter Lampl, a former adviser to Sir Tony Blair, founder of the Sutton Trust, and former schoolmate of Starmer, criticised the prime minister’s VAT policy on private schools in an article published in The Telegraph.

In a recent biography by Tom Baldwin, Starmer is quoted as saying: “As far as I was concerned, I started school as a ‘state boy’ and I finished as one too.”

Lampl points out that Reigate Grammar School, which they both attended, was funded by the council when Starmer joined but two years later it became independent. The local authority covered fees for pupils who had enrolled before the conversion and Starmer received a bursary to continue his studies in the sixth form.

Lampl wrote: “I don’t pretend the school we went to was a state school, Starmer does. But he is fudging the facts.

“I am helping young people to benefit from an education that made all the difference to me, Starmer is destroying the opportunities to have the same chances he had.”