Evan Harris today demanded an apology from Chancellor Gordon Brown for his ill-judged "slander" of Magdalen College, Oxford, over the rejection of teenager Laura Spence, writes Bill Jacobs.

Mr Brown claimed it was an "absolute disgrace" that the Tyneside schoolgirl was refused a place to study medicine when she was offered a scholarship by US university Harvard.

In a special Commons debate, Dr Harris accused Mr Brown of getting his facts wrong and making the recruitment of state school pupils to Britain's other top universities more difficult. The Oxford West and Abingdon MP, who is also Liberal Democrat Higher Education spokesman, told Lifelong Learning Minister Malcolm Wicks representing the Government: "The very least the Chancellor could do or you could do on his behalf is apologise for this unjustified attack on Oxford."

He said Mr Brown had ignored the efforts Magdalen College and the rest of the University had made to get more state school pupils to Oxford and said his comments were a "slander". Dr Harris said there was a problem getting more such pupils into top universities.

It was partly due to poor performance by many state schools and difficulties in persuading students to apply to Oxford and Cambridge in the first place.