Home secretary blames media for confusion over knife criminals' visits to victims in A&E

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Gordon Brown's initiative of a huge expansion of family intervention projects to reduce youth crime was overshadowed yesterday when Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, was forced to backtrack on widely ridiculed plans to order perpetrators of knife crime to visit their victims in hospital.

Smith said the proposal had been misinterpreted by the media, but in at least two broadcast interviews on Sunday she failed to clarify her plans.

Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, accused her of a U-turn and gimmickry. "This is yet another government announcement that has been conjured up in three days and collapsed in three hours," he said.

The Home Office insisted Smith had never advocated taking knife criminals to see their victims in hospital, a proposal that would have echoes of Tony Blair's plan for forcing yobs to march to cashpoints to pay fines.

In the Commons, Smith said: "I never said, and nor would it be sensible, for young people to be trailed through A&E wards while people were being served."

In two interviews including one with Adam Boulton for Sky news she was asked "One of those proposals is that people caught carrying knives should be taken to see people in hospital that have been stabbed or to meet the families of victims. Is that correct?" Smith replied: "It is."

At his monthly press conference, Brown said: "Too many people, young and old, do not feel safe in the streets, and sometimes even in their homes, as a result of the behaviour of a minority."

>Families in the worst trouble would sometimes be required to live in residential accommodation while they try to resolve their chaotic lives. Families that refuse could be evicted if they lived in social housing, Brown said.

>Brown also added: "We need to make it absolutely clear to everyone, especially young people, that in our country there are boundaries of acceptable behaviour. It is completely unacceptable to carry a knife".

>"Communities ... should have a role in deciding what they should do, cleaning up parks or scrubbing graffiti, and what time they should do it, such as cleaning the streets on Friday and Saturday night."

>He said community payback should be "tough, visible and effective", but he did not advocate that those undertaking it wear uniforms, as proposed by Casey.