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Nick Clegg has informed MPs that improving the life chances of children born into low and middle-income families is the government's "overriding mission".
Clegg was summoned to the dispatch box to answer and urgent question on the government's social mobility strategy by deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman.
She told the Commons that mobility now meant a "bus down to the job centre" for many young people.
The Liberal Democrat leader said that in the UK, the income and social class of parents continued to have a "huge bearing" on a child's prospects.
Clegg said gaps in development between children from different backgrounds could be detected even at birth.
"For us a fair society is an open society - one in which everyone is free to flourish and rise regardless of the circumstances of their birth," he told the Commons
"That is why the promotion of social mobility is the principal objective of the coalition government's social policy."
Clegg said the plans were part of a "long term project, that deserve a serious approach".
The deputy Labour leader attacked the plans and said Clegg had given up "the right to pontificate" on the subject when he "betrayed a generation of young people" by scrapping the education maintenance allowance and the increase in tuition fees in England.
"When I heard the deputy prime minister was going to launch a commission on social mobility I thought it was April Fools' Day," she told MPs.
"For many young people mobility has turned into a bus down to the job centre."
Harman hit out at a recent Tory fundraising event that auctioned off internships at top financial institutions, accusing Clegg of "waltzing to the tune of the Tories".
She added: "He may be a man on a mission but with him at the helm it's mission impossible."
The deputy prime minister had earlier set out plans to open Whitehall work placements to all youngsters and encourage businesses to do the same.
As the coalition publishes its social mobility and child poverty strategies, the Liberal Democrat leader called for internships to no longer be the preserve of the "sharp-elbowed and well-connected".
He called on businesses to make internships more transparent and financially viable to the less well-off, through covering expenses or offering a wage.
The civil service will lead the way, with Whitehall bringing an end to the practice of informal internships by 2012. Instead, government department internships will be advertised on a central website.
Alongside the social mobility strategy, work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith has published the government's child poverty strategy.
In a joint article, Clegg and Duncan Smith said Labour spent billions moving people above the poverty line, without significantly changing their lives or the life chances of their children.
"A focus on social mobility means helping those from poorer backgrounds," they wrote in the Daily Telegraph.
"But it means helping middle-income households, too. There are millions of parents working hard to make the best life possible for their children.
"Most of them are not poor, and certainly don't want to rely on welfare payments. But nor are they rich enough to insulate their children against life's misfortunes."
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