Mr Blair was challenged by Dr John Sentamu after refusing to condemn Guantanamo Bay beyond calling the prison camp run by the US in Cuba an “anomaly”.

The Prime Minister also risked the wrath of civil liberties campaigners — including his own wife — by accusing Amnesty International and a cross-party committee of MPs of looking at Britain’s treatment of terrorist suspects “the wrong way round”.

At his monthly news conference, he said that too much time was spent examining the rights of suspects compared to the “human rights of the rest of us to live in safety”.

Mr Blair had been stung by criticism from the MPs’ Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) that the monitoring of suspects returned to countries with questionable human rights records must not be a “fig leaf to disguise the real risk of torture”.

Mr Blair said: “When people say to me unless I can get absolute cast-iron guarantees and have all sorts of monitoring arrangements, we have got to keep people here who may be engaging actively in inciting terrorism in this country, I have to say I think we have got the world the wrong way round.”

His outburst may even cause a backlash at home. Cherie Booth, QC, his wife and a leading human rights barrister, is due to give a speech at an event partly organised by Human Rights Watch next week entitled Torture: Do the rules still matter?

Mr Blair spoke out after the FAC called on him to push more vociferously for the closure of Guantanamo Bay. Amnesty International also issued a report criticising many of Britain’s measures in the war in terror for undermining human rights.

They were joined last night in an attack by Dr Sentamu who compared President Bush’s human rights record with that of the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

Dr Sentamu, a former High Court judge who fled Uganda for Britain after it became clear that standing up to the dictator had placed his own life in jeopardy, also criticised Mr Blair for describing Guantanamo Bay as an “anomaly”.

Dr Sentamu said: “This is not an ‘anomaly’. By declaring ‘war on terror’ President Bush is perversely applying the rules of engagement that apply in a war situation. But the prisoners are not being regularly visited by the Red Cross or Red Crescent, which is required by the Geneva Convention. They were not even allowed to be interviewed by the UN human rights group.

“In Uganda President Amin did something similar: he did not imprison suspects because he knew that in prison, the law would apply to them so he created special places to keep them. If the Guantanamo Bay detainees were on American soil the law would apply. This is a breach of international law and a blight on the conscience of America.”

Mr Blair hinted that he had spoken more strongly about Guantanamo Bay in private with Mr Bush but would use no stronger word to describe it yesterday than “anomaly”.

Times Recommends

• Looking for romance on the Blairs' love bus
• Children 'immersed in culture of violence'
• Hunt for black gold sweeps the country