If elected chancellor of Cambridge University next week, human rights lawyer Michael Mansfield QC (pictured, centre) plans to adopt a vigorously interventionist approach to the role.

Mansfield told the Gazette that government policy on admission fees ‘disregards our international [convention] obligations’ as well as the domestic commitment to human rights. He backs the legal challenge to the decision to increase tuition fees being brought by two sixth-form students, Callum Hurley and Katy Moore.

The claim, which seeks the repeal of the Higher Education (Higher Amount) Regulations 2010, has permission for judicial review later this month.

Mansfield’s stance puts him on a collision course with the policy adopted by the university’s governing body, Regent’s House, which voted in support of tuition fees for new undergraduates, set at £9,000 a year from 2012.

In this election, Lord Sainsbury is the preferred candidate of the university’s nominations committee.

Dr Ian Patterson, one of Mansfield’s nominators, confirmed that his supporters were ‘by and large in favour of free higher education, paid for by the state, and in favour of a much broader base of entrants, with a much smaller percentage of students from independent schools’.

Mansfield is also concerned about the ‘erosion of autonomy’ that government policies on funding and regulation of universities represent.

The electorate is near-impossible to poll with any accuracy - in addition to most academics, anyone who holds a masters degree from the university may vote, though they must do so in person. Patterson noted: ‘Mansfield has pretty substantial support, though the university establishment is pushing Sainsbury quite hard.’