Senior bishops have added their weight to a campaign to scrap a notorious cap on faith-based admissions to new Catholic schools.

In 2010 the Coalition Government of ex-Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron introduced the cap to ensure that half of all pupils and students attending newly-built faith schools did not belong to that particular faith.

The bishops have consistently argued that the rule unfairly discriminates against Catholic students for whom the schools were intended because many would be unable to attend because their places were allocated instead to non-believers.