Education Secretary Gillian Keegan has met Catholic leaders amid urgent pleas from the Church to lift a highly contentious faith-based admissions cap on new free schools.

Keegan, who was educated at Catholic schools, received a Church delegation to hear the case for scrapping the ban brought in under the coalition Government of former Tory Prime Minister David Cameron.

The delegation included Paul Barber, the director of the Catholic Education Service, an agency of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales; Sir Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP for Gainsborough, and James Somerville-Meikle, the Catholic Union deputy director.