Cameron accuses PM over knife crime 'U-turn'

David Cameron has accused the prime minister of misleading people following confusion over the government's strategy for tackling knife crime.

Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday at the last prime minister's question before Parliament breaks for its summer recess, the Conservative leader called on Gordon Brown to explain who came up with the "bright idea" that knife criminals visit stab victims in hospital.

Home secretary Jacqui Smith signalled at the weekend that this could be an option, but on Monday denied making the suggestion.

Smith insisted she had been talking about sending young people caught in possession of a knife into hospitals to talk to health professionals but the Tories and Liberal Democrats claimed she had been forced into a U-turn.

Brown said: "Everybody must be concerned about knife crime and everybody in this House must want to take all the action that is necessary.

"That is why we're proposing tougher punishment, tougher enforcement and tougher prevention."

On prevention, he said that the main thing announced this week were plans to make 20,000 families sign good behaviour contracts and make 110,000 subject to parental supervision.

"For the first time we're taking all the anti-social behaviour families and trying to take action to deal at root cause with the problem," he told MPs.

Cameron again asked the prime minister to say who came up with the proposal.

"Why can't the prime minister be straight with people and tell us who thought up the idea?" the Tory leader said.

He added: "Doesn't the prime minister understand he won't get decent policies until he works out what went wrong last time?"

Brown countered that it was "right that people should have to face up to consequences of their crimes".

He urged all-party support for "tougher penalties, tougher enforcement with visible policing in our communities [and] tougher prevention".

And he said that the main proposal was "that every problem family where there is action to be taken should be subject to parental supervision".

"I would have thought that would have the support of all the House," the prime minister said.