Blunkett's joy at Shipman suicide

David Blunkett was at the centre of a political storm today when he admitted he had felt like toasting the death of killer doctor Harold Shipman.

The Home Secretary's unguarded remarks astonished MPs in the wake of Shipman's suicide in prison.

Mr Blunkett said: "You wake up and you receive a phone call telling you that Shipman has topped himself. And you think, is it too early to open a bottle?

"Then you discover that everybody's really upset. So you have to be very cautious in this job, very careful."

Mr Blunkett also revealed that an inquiry by prisons ombudsman Stephen Shaw into how Shipman was able to commit suicide inside Wakefield jail was unlikely to blame prison officers or other staff for negligence. He said: "I don't want to prejudge the inquiry, but the presumption at the moment is that people did their job properly. If you are determined to mislead, it is very difficult to stop someone achieving it."

Mr Blunkett's remarks, at a dinner with journalists in London last night, astonished observers at Westminster.

He conceded that there were questions to be asked about how Shipman was able to take his own life, but added: "They need to be set in the context of the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever he had given signals that he was a suicide risk, none at all. Had there been, over the last five years, then obviously steps would have been taken... to change the nature of the supervision."

Keeping a prisoner under constant supervision throughout a sentence of 30 years or more would have "resource implications", Mr Blunkett said.

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Mark Oaten condemned the comments and warned they would upset the relatives of Shipman's victims.

"Many families were devastated to learn of Shipman's suicide," he said. "Now they will never know why he killed their mum or granny or brother or sister.

"Mr Blunkett has nothing to celebrate in the fact that the Prison Service is incapable of detaining people properly for their crimes, and has an appalling suicide record. He should put his cork back in the bottle."

The Home Secretary spoke about the case while explaining the pressures of his job. He said: "The difficulty with the job at the moment is that post-September 11, anything can happen and on any day ... you are on a rollercoaster all the time."

Shipman was Britain's worst mass murderer. An inquiry found he killed at least 215 of his patients while practising as a GP - most recently in Hyde, Greater Manchester. He killed himself on Tuesday, the day before his 58th birthday, after making a six-minute phone call to his wife Primrose, who is expected to receive a pension windfall following his death.