The former Home Secretary is said to have “shrieked” down the telephone to Martin Narey that he did not care about the possible loss of life among staff or prisoners during efforts to retake Lincoln jail which had been taken over by rioting inmates.

Mr Narey said that the way Mr Blunkett behaved during the riot convinced him that he was not up to the job of being Home Secretary.

Writing in The Times, Mr Narey responds to an entry in Mr Blunkett’s diaries that his organisation had dithered and equivocated after prisoners took control of the jail in October 2002.

Mr Blunkett last night categorically denied Mr Narey’s claims and said that his diaries were an accurate account of events at the time.

In his diaries Mr Blunkett admits that he threatened to bring in the Army but makes no mention of the heated nature of the phone call.

Mr Narey was later promoted, becoming a Second Permanent Secretary at the Home Office while Mr Blunkett was Home Secretary .

In his attack on Mr Blunkett in The Times, Mr Narey tells how he called the Home Secretary on the evening of the riot. He said that Mr Blunkett was furious after the 25 staff on duty had been forced to leave the wings to secure the prison perimeter. Mr Narey said that Mr Blunkett was also “hysterical” during the phone conversation and directed him without delay to order the staff back into the prison.

Mr Narey said that he would take the prison back as quickly as possible, but would not risk staff or prisoners’ lives.

“He shrieked at me that he didn’t care about lives, told me to call in the Army and “machinegun” the prisoners and — still shrieking — again ordered me to take the prison back immediately. I refused. David hung up,” Mr Narey said.

He added that even though he did not take Mr Blunkett’s remarks literally he was flustered and dismayed that a Secretary of State could use such inflammatory language. Another prison governor he was with at the time said: “Did he really say he didn’t care about lives”.

In his diary Mr Blunkett claims that this was an incident where he made a difference as Home Secretary because his instinct was for the riot to be dealt with decisively. He had also strengthened the arm of those prepared to act and to override those who were dithering.

Mr Narey, who left the Home Office in 2005 to become Chief Executive of Barnardos, said that the former Home Secretary’s reaction compared unfavourably with his Conservative and Labour predecessors and his successor secretaries and have seen four very closely — Michael Howard, Jack Straw, David Blunkett and Charles Clarke — and I felt David’s response to a crisis was the least competent of those that I saw,” he said.

Mr Narey added: “It is important that officials feel confident in being able to speak the truth to power. Far too often in my experience, David terrified political advisers and those very close to him.”

Mr Narey was widely seen as one of those whom Mr Blunkett relied on to overhaul the running of the Home Office. After his tenure at the Prison Service he became chief executive of the newly formed National Offender Management Service and was then made a second permanent secretary at the department.

Mr Narey was at pains to say that relations with Mr Blunkett were not always turbulent.

He said: “There were moments at which we got on very well and I thought toward the end of his time he was beginning to take a much more strategic view.”

Mr Blunkett’s spokesman said last night: “Everything to do with the Lincoln riot is in the diary. The diary records precisely what happened. He did order the retaking of the prison. He did not say anything about machineguns. Quite apart from anything else they do not carry machineguns in the Prison Service.

“Any such phone call would have been monitored by Mr Blunkett’s private office. They did retake the prison in the end but while the episode was going on Mr Blunkett reminded Martin Narey of a situation that had occurred when David Waddington, then Home Secretary, had failed to act in similar circumstances.

“Martin Narey had not been aware of that. During the Lincoln prison situation Mr Blunkett offered Martin Narey absolute political cover for dealing with the situation.”

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