The home secretary has issued a stark warning to asylum seekers as part of his report on the riot at the Yarls Wood detention centre.

David Blunkett told MPs on Monday that 22 people were still at large following the riot which saw large parts of the centre burnt to the ground causing damage costing more than £38 million.

"It is now clear there are small numbers of people who will take any step to prevent their removal from this country. We therefore have no option but to toughen the regime," he warned. "The lessons of February 14 will be learned."

"No one will be permitted to engage in the kind of behaviour which put lives at risk and destroyed first class facilities built at public expense and created as an alternative to prison regimes. That is the message I intend to give this afternoon," he said.

Blunkett defended the decision not to fit a fire prevention system when the centre was built.

"The decision not to fit sprinklers was informed by a number of different expert sources," he said.

He announced that a sprinkler system would now be fitted at the centre and other detention units that hold asylum seekers who have lost their appeals to remain in Britain.

Asylum seekers with a history of violence had been transferred back to prisons and that procedure would now become standard practice. The whole process of returning people whose applications had failed would now be sped up as a result of the riot.

The home secretary blasted the behaviour of the inmates who prior to the centre being built would have ended up in prison cells.

"Having removed asylum seekers from prison we now find our reward is the burning down of a new facility. This is deplorable," he said.

He praised the emergency services and Yarls Wood operators Group 4.

Oliver Letwin described the riot as being "an exceptionally serious event" that raised fundamental questions about the government's strategy.

He wanted to know why warnings from the prison service about rioting were ignored and why the advice by Bedfordshire fire service over the fitting of sprinklers was overruled.

The Home Office has already confirmed that the centre will remain open.

Some 233 male asylum seekers are currently being detained in the unaffected areas of the building and the Fire Brigade Union has called for these people to be released.