David Blunkett, who served as a senior member of Tony Blair's cabinet, has told the Today programme that the former prime minister still believes he was right to invade Iraq in 2003.

Speaking as Mr Blair prepares to give evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, Mr Blunkett told Today presenter Evan Davis: "I don't think Tony Blair today will have any equivocation because he believed he was right and he still does.

"And anyone who doesn't believe they're right going into something as traumatic, as earth moving, as personally and emotionally traumatic as taking the country to war, albeit on a vote of all of us, because we did have a vote; if you went into that with any equivocation at all, you shouldn't be doing it."

Mr Blunkett admitted that a large swathe of public opinion is against Mr Blair, adding that he is a figure who "provokes substantial support or substantial acrimony and bitterness". But he praised Mr Blair as "one of our greatest prime ministers".