Brown asks offenders for knife views as row grows over U-turn

Whitehall insiders revealed that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith felt "bruised" after Gordon Brown yesterday revealed the most hard-hitting parts of her proposals.

The Prime Minister stole Ms Smith's thunder by announcing details of plans to target 110,000 problem families and threaten them with eviction if they failed to get their children to behave.

Ms Smith was forced instead to spend much of today dealing with claims that she had performed a U-turn over plans to march knife yobs through A&E units in hospitals.

The Home Secretary had been due to attend a press launch with Schools Secretary Ed Balls and Justice Secretary Jack Straw today but Ms Smith decided at the last minute to call off the event, the Standard has learned. Publication of the Youth Crime Ac t ion Plan was also delayed by two hours as different departments rowed over which of them should take the lead.

The Home Office was stunned last week to hear Mr Brown declare that announcements would be made on "Monday", when the launch had long been planned for today.

Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve accused the Government of "constructing policy in three days, abandoning it in three hours".

The fresh evidence of chaos at the top of Government overshadowed the actual polices unveiled today.

Under the plans more children may be named and shamed by the courts in a bid to cut youth crime.

Ministers will ask judges to consider widening the number of cases in which 16- and 17-year-old offenders could be publicly named.

Newspapers and broadcasters are banned from naming most criminals under 18, apart from exceptional cases, usually involving extreme violence. Today's proposal could see anonymity being lifted far more regularly.

The £100 million package featured two schemes allowing young criminals to avoid being prosecuted if they take steps to improve their behaviour.

The Government said the new Youth Conditional Caution will be piloted from next April to "reduce the number of young people being taken to court for relatively low-level offences while providing a robust response to their offending".

Ministers will also consider expanding a scheme which sees children involved in low-level crime avoiding prosecution if they meet their victims and apologise. Eight police forces have been involved in a pilot version of the scheme, known as the Youth Restorative Disposal.

Earlier the Prime Minister came face to face with young offenders completing community sentences in south London. Mr Brown spoke with five teenagers being supervised by the Reparation Project in Brockley, which is based at an adventure playground. The youths go to the centre several times a week to complete community service tasks and learn skills such as carpentry.

He asked them how knife crime affected them and what could be done to reduce the number of knives being carried on the streets.

The Prime Minister said: "What a project like this does is encourage a young person ... that you can make the most of your talents. But you've got to stop offending and you've got to get off the streets - no knives, no guns, no gangs. That's the way forward."

He added: "Our message is to punish and prevent - if you commit a crime as a young person you've got to know we're going to be tough."

However, the chief inspector of probation today warned Mr Brown against "spectacular innovations" in the fight against crime. Andrew Bridges used his annual report to highlight the risks of "being beguiled by exciting fallacies" in attempts to reduce offending. "We need to focus more on the mundane truths instead of being distracted by thinking that there is a cure-all here," he said.

Earlier Boris Johnson told MPs of his concern over knife crime in the capital. Appearing before the Commons home affairs select committee, the Mayor said long-term solutions included "restorative justice schemes" in which offenders confront the consequences of their behaviour, as well as the promotion of positive role models in early intervention projects to prevent youths drifting into crime. He also called for a drive to "de-glamorise" knife crime.

"My heart sinks when I hear or read about some of the language that is used to describe the victims of knife crime," he said. "This stuff about 'You were a good soldier', a 'fallen soldier' - we do need to detonate the myth that there is anything romantic or glamorous about these tragic episodes."

Mr Johnson added that despite the recent spate of stabbings, London remained a "very, very safe city".