Knife crime crackdown in chaos as ministers back down over plans to make offenders meet victims

Labour's plans to tackle Britain's knife crime epidemic were in disarray last night.

Home Office moves to force violent thugs to visit stab victims in hospital had to be dumped within 24 hours after outrage among doctors, patients, crime experts and MPs.

The climbdown triggered speculation that ministers had been panicked into announcing rash proposals after six murders in just one day last week.

It came hours after Gordon Brown made the extraordinary admission that 'too many people' now felt unsafe on the streets  -  and even in their homes.

The Prime Minister also pledged to target 110,000 'problem families' raising a generation of troublemakers as part of a £100million action plan on youth crime being unveiled today.

Parents could be evicted and young offenders be ordered to clean the streets on Friday and Saturday nights, he added.

But that announcement was overshadowed by the confusion at the heart of Government.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was forced to use a Commons appearance yesterday to 'clarify' proposed shock tactics to make those who carry knives understand the horror of stab wounds.

'We are not proposing to bring young people into wards to see patients,' she told MPs.

'I never said, and nor would it be sensible, for young people to be trailed through A&E wards.'

However, officials had made clear at the weekend that extending so-called 'knife referral schemes' could mean youths caught carrying blades meeting victims.

In broadcast interviews on Sunday to trumpet her plans, Miss Smith also failed to correct interviewers who asked her directly about the measure.

Seized: Knives collected by police

The U-turn came after criticism rained down on the Government.

A&E specialist Donald Mackechnie, clinical vice-president of the College of Emergency Medicine, said victims would be in 'an extremely vulnerable state'.

Joyce Robins, of pressure group Patient Concern, added that they would 'find the idea of tearaways being marched into A&E to look at their wounds horrendous'.

Stab victim Jack Hancock, 22, from Wirral, Merseyside, told the BBC: ' Knifecarriers don't follow rules and they don't live their lives within normal boundaries.

'I don't see any other place for them but prison. Then they might learn.'

Last night the Tories and Liberal Democrats made the most of the chaos.

Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: 'It's going to give the impression that the Government is constructing policy in three days, abandoning it in three hours and that this is gimmickry.'

LibDem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne mocked: 'Thank heavens the Home Secretary has seen sense.

'This idea is not just bonkers but has been tried, tested and failed in the United States.'

Critics claim the only effective deterrent is jail and dismiss other measures as 'gimmicks and stunts'.

Questions over Mr Brown's leadership are also certain to resurface as he has again been forced on the back foot.

Yesterday, he made a frank admission of how deeply violent crime infects communities.

'Too many people, young and old, do not feel safe in the streets, and sometimes even in their homes,' he said.

'That's why we are toughening up punishment, enforcement and prevention.'

Mr Brown criticised advice from the Sentencing Guidelines Council that knife possession could be punished with just a fine as 'not acceptable'.

He added that there will be greater use of stop and search, more high visibility police patrols and curfews for teenagers.

Mr Brown also highlighted tough 'community payback' sentences included in the youth crime action plan being announced today.

Under the scheme, young offenders would have to do unpaid work, such as litter-picking, for six hours a day for up to 50 days.

The action plan also focuses on 110,000 families with children who have been excluded from school or been in trouble with the police.

Parents will be put on intensive courses and the worst 20,000 families will be threatened with eviction if they do not improve.

Soaring levels of knife crime have helped push up emergency hospital admissions by a third in just four years, reveals a survey today.

Almost one in seven of A&E admissions from 2002-6 was due to stab wounds, according to the study by the Centre for Public Health in Liverpool.