The problem of teenage gang violence could take a generation to solve, according to the policeman given the job of devising a national knife crime strategy.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Alf Hitchcock told The Times yesterday that effective policing could reduce knife attacks in the short term but would not provide a long-term solution. Mr Hitchcock said that it was “hugely worrying” that the annual number of hospital admissions for knife injuries had risen in recent years from 3,000 to 5,000 while the age of those carrying and using knives had fallen steeply.

The Scotland Yard officer was chosen by Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, to develop a plan for fighting knife crime in eight hotspot areas of the country. Ms Smith also revealed a range of “shock tactics” – including visits to knife victims in hospital – that she hoped would deter young people from carrying weapons.

Her ideas were derided as “half-baked” and “piecemeal” by opposition spokesmen. Mr Hitchcock called for a united front by politicians.

He said: “One of the worries I have is the way that this issue is being used politically at the moment. This is a time for the parties to stop using it as a political argument and to start working together. We all know that policing alone isn’t going to solve this. There is a far broader and deeper piece of work that needs to be done about how we plan over the next 10 or 15 or 20 years to solve these problems.”

Mr Hitchcock, who speaks on knife crime for the Association of Chief Police Officers, added: “Recently we have seen the emergence of a worrying trend in relation to knife crime. We see both an intensification in the severity of offending, and a worrying change in the age profile of offenders and victims, which has decreased from mid-late teens to early twenties down to early-to-mid-teens.”

In another interview, Mr Hitchcock outlined a proposal for a nonmilitary version of national service in which young people not working or in education would be paid to help out in the community, such as working with elderly and disabled people or taking part in overseas aid programmes. “It would give them a sense of responsibility and achievement – and some discipline,” he told the Daily Mail.

Mr Hitchcock’s work will focus on the knife crime problem areas of London, the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Lancashire, Essex, Thames Valley and West Yorkshire. The first wave of forces will develop common practices on intelligence gathering, stop-and-search, enforcement, prosecution and educating young people about how to stay safe. Other forces will then be required to adopt the same tactics.

Ministers will reveal a range of measures this week to confront knife crime. Potential offenders will be shown the reality of knife injuries in hospitals and taken to meet prisoners jailed for stabbings as well as the families of victims. Some of the measures appeared to repeat announcements made by the Government last month.

Ms Smith said that the hospital visits would make people realise that there was nothing glamorous about carrying a knife. “I just think that’s a better way of making people face up to the consequences of action and making them more likely not to carry knives again in the future.”

She added: “The important message that we need to get over to young people is if you think you are safer going out on the streets carrying a knife you are wrong. You are likely to have that knife used against you, you could potentially end up using it against somebody else, your life will be ruined and the lives of others will be ruined as well.”

Ms Smith said that calling for all offenders to go to jail was “simplistic”. Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Home Secretary, said that Ms Smith’s proposals were “ill-thought-through, piecemeal announcements and failed initiatives” and demanded more jail terms for knife offenders.

“Sending serious offenders to visit victims in hospital is not anywhere near the same as sending them to prison,” he said. “Not only would we have tough policing to tackle knife crime on our streets now, but under our plans people convicted of knife crime would automatically face the presumption of jail. This would act as a deterrent.”

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said American research had found that showing teenagers the consequences of other people’s crimes did not work.

Mr Huhne added: “Jacqui Smith is coming up with half-baked ideas because the Government has been in denial about the scale of the knife-crime problem.”

All in a weekend

Bolton Paul Gilligan, 30, died in hospital early yesterday after being stabbed twice at the Pepper Alley pub. A 19-year-old man is being held on suspicion of murder. Mr Gilligan’s death was the third stabbing incident in the town in 48 hours. A 24-year-old man and a 19-year-old man were injured in separate stabbing incidents on Friday. Greater Manchester Police said that stabbing incidents were rare in the area. However, sources in the ambulance service suggested that knife attacks often went unreported - including two on Saturday

London Two people were injured when they were stabbed during an attempted robbery at King George V Docklands Light Railway station in East London yesterday afternoon. Meanwhile, police identified one of four men fatally stabbed in the capital on Thursday as Melvin Bryan, 18. He became the twentieth teenager to die violently in London this year. The other three victims of the unconnected attacks, were Gennar Jaronis, 41, from Latvia, killed in Tottenham; Adnan Patel, 20, stabbed in Leyton; and Yusufu Miiro, 20, a student who was murdered in Walthamstow. A 17-year-old will appear before magistrates today charged with the murder of Shakilus Townsend, 16, in Thornton Heath

West Midlands The victim of a fatal stabbing in West Bromwich was named as Tom Coombs Duffield, 20, whose girlfriend was pregnant with his first child. Mr Coombs Duffield was stabbed five times after a late-night argument on the street and died in hospital at about 1am on Friday. Police are questioning a 21-year-old man

Bristol A man in his forties was stabbed in Gatehouse Avenue, Bristol, on Saturday night. He was taken to Frenchay Hospital but died of his wounds yesterday morning. Two men have since been arrested. Police said they believe that the killing was related to a domestic disturbance

Perth and Kinross A 22-year-old man suffered “horrific” injuries during a knife attack at T in the Park, the biggest music festival in Scotland, attended by 80,000 people. Tayside police said that they were looking for two men in connection with the attack, which took place at about 12.45am

Cleveland A 21-year-old man underwent surgery at the James Cook University Hospital, Middlesbrough, after a knife attack at a house in Redcar

Tyneside A man in his forties suffered stab wounds after what appeared to be a domestic incident in South Shields. A Northumbria Police spokesman said that a 37-year-old woman had been arrested

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