Rt Hon David Blunkett MP is a British Labour Party politician who was born in Sheffield. He was educated at schools for the blind in Sheffield and Shrewsbury. He then went on to win a place at the University of Sheffield, and became the youngest-ever councillor on Sheffield City Council at the age of 22. At the 1987 general election he was elected MP for Sheffield Brightside.

He became a party spokesman on local government, joined the shadow cabinet in 1992 as Shadow Health Secretary, and became Shadow Education Secretary in 1994. At the start of the Labour Government's second term in 2001, Blunkett was promoted to Home Secretary.

Rt Hon David Blunkett MP said: “The prime task of any criminal justice system is to prevent people from committing a crime in the first place, and then, to avoid re-offending. Getting across a clear message, forewarning young people what prison is like, and encouraging them to take an alternative path in life, has to make sense.

He added: “Therefore, linking preventative work in warning young people, with a clear method of getting across to both potential criminals and the public as a whole, the reality of prison, will make a significant contribution to both education and greater understanding.

“ With ever increasing prison numbers, with longer sentences and with a continuing disquiet about the revolving door of re-offending, anything that can add to a range of measures for re-educating is well worth the experiment undertaken by Shine North in conjunction with Five.

“This experiment has given ten young people a second chance and this is like a second chance for me. Over four years I had the opportunity to do some of these things and I failed to invest sufficiently in the experiments that make it possible.”