Government 'failing on knife crime'

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The British Crime Survey (BCS) showed nearly 130,000 took place last year - and the total does not include offences involving under-16s.

The grim total means that someone was wounded or threatened with a knife, on average, once every four minutes.

Although overall crime was down, Conservatives said the statistics contained some "chilling" facts which exposed Labour's failure on law and order.

The figures - which will deepen public concern about knife crime - disclosed that more than 22,000 serious offences involved a blade last year, including 231 attempted murders, nearly 14,000 robberies and more than 8,000 woundings.

A third of all violent crimes involved a gang of three or more offenders, they showed. A quarter of such crimes featured four or more assailants and 8% involved three attackers.

Nearly one in eight violent crimes involved school-age children and 52% were committed by criminals aged 16 to 24. Additional figures from the UK card payments association Apacs revealed a leap in plastic card fraud.

Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve said: "While we welcome a drop in overall recorded crime these figures cannot hide some very chilling facts.

"The fact that violent crime has risen by 80% under Labour and the scale of knife crime on our streets, officially recorded for the first time, is a shocking indictment of Labour's failure to tackle crime and its causes."

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said: "Three years ago we set ourselves the tough challenge to reduce all crime by 15%. I am extremely pleased that today's figures show that we have exceeded this with an overall crime reduction of 18%. The Government's priority is to build on what we have achieved."