The ex-Labour Home Secretary Lord David Blunkett has admitted that introducing imprisonment for public protection sentences is his "biggest regret"."

The former minister labelled the jail terms - which have left some inmates imprisoned for almost 20 years after committing minor crimes - a "mistake"."

Lord Blunkett brought in the controversial orders, known as IPPs, while serving in Tony Blair's Labour government from 2001 to 2004.

And he said he took advice from experts about the sentences, which only let prisoners leave jail if a parole board deemed them ‘no threat to the wider community'.

But in the years that followed, thousands of convicts were jailed under the orders for crimes including stealing mobile phones.

And even though they were abolished in 2012, around 2,800 people remain trapped in prisons after receiving the sentences.

Speaking about the policy's failings, Lord Blunkett, 77, said: "I made my mistakes."

"The judges who are the ones who sentenced and had this on the menu, they made their mistakes and those who advised us, including psychologists, made a mistake about what the likely impact is."

Lord Blunkett's intervention comes as the government released more than 1,000 prisoners earlier in September - saying the system was "on the brink of collapse"."

And he said he had been talking to the new prisons and probation minister, James Timpson, about how to get more IPPs prisoners out of jail.

He went on: "I have been talking with the new prisons and probation minister James Timpson already and I'm seeing the Justice Secretary in the middle of October and they are clear that there will be a residual number between 400-500 who would have been sentence to life had they not been sentenced to IPP."

"It's going to be very difficult dealing with them, but the other 700 or so we need to get out of prison and into the community as quickly as we can and above all we have got to avoid recall... We are all agreed we have got to do something about it."

IPPs were designed for dangerous prisoners whose crimes did not qualify for life sentences.

After serving a minimum tariff behind bars, determined at their sentencing hearings, the idea was to retain offenders behind bars indefinitely until they could prove that they were no longer a threat to the public.

But it often led to inmates spending years locked up after their minimum tariff - and prisoners on IPPs could also be recalled to prison for years after their release.

Among those still in jail is Thomas White, 40, who has been locked up for 12 years after receiving a two-year minimum tariff IPP jail term.

Lord Blunkett previously told his son, Kadyn 14, who last saw his dad out of prison when he was ten months old, he had "got it wrong" on IPPs at a meeting."

Following his admission, Lord Blunkett outlined how he would choose to address the prisons crisis if he were still leading the Home Office.

And he said he was in favour of building small ‘remand centres' across Britain to house those before they go to court rather than new large-scale prisons.

He said: "Instead of building even more large prisons, which are difficult to get planning consent for, difficult to go through the building processes and difficult to recruit for once you have built them... Why not build a large number of small remand centres right across Britain?"

"There'd be much less objects from the locality because these people have not been found guilty, they are not sentenced."

He added: "I am hoping to persuade ministers to do that because there is money in the forward budget and I don't think there's a chance of Rachel Reeves cutting that."

"The money is there so why not use it more smartly."

Lord Blunkett praised the new Labour government for getting off to a "great start" since taking power in July 2024, pointing to the handling of the riots in August as a positive example."