Knife crime plans 'half-baked'

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said young offenders caught with a blade would be confronted with stab victims on A&E wards and taken on prison visits to meet inmates jailed for knife offences.

These measures were introduced in a Home Office press release on "tough new sanctions to tackle knife crime" last month.

Lib-Dem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said US research had found that showing teenagers the consequences of other people's crimes did not work.

He said: "Jacqui Smith is coming up with half-baked ideas because the Government has been in denial about the scale of the knife crime problem.

"Only a month ago, the Home Secretary denied that knife crime had got worse despite hospital admission figures released to the Liberal Democrats showing a shocking rise in teenage victims. Now she has been panicked into suggesting a plan that has already been tried and has failed in the United States, as the criminological evidence clearly shows."

Meanwhile, a man in his 30s died after he was stabbed during a night out, police said. The man was found stabbed at the Pepper Alley pub in Crown Street, Bolton, Greater Manchester, at 12.50am. He was taken to the Royal Bolton Hospital with two stab wounds but later died from his injuries.

A 19-year-old has been arrested on suspicion of murder.

And a man was in a serious condition after he was stabbed in the campsite of the T in the Park festival, Tayside Police said. The 22-year-old man was found by police with multiple stab wounds in the "yellow zone" of the Scottish festival's campsite at 12.40am.

He was treated by medics on the scene and taken by ambulance to Dundee's Ninewells Hospital, where he was said to be in a serious but stable condition.