The Government’s strategy on knife crime was in disarray last night as the Home Secretary was accused of a U-turn over plans, briefed at the weekend, to confront offenders with stabbing victims in hospital.

Jacqui Smith insisted to the Commons that, despite widespread reports, she had never said that the Government was proposing to take young people into wards to see patients.

Her words were apparently contradicted by an interview that she had given to Sky News on Sunday. She was asked: “One of those proposals is that people caught carrying knives should be taken to see people in hospital who have been stabbed, or to meet the families of victims, is that correct?”

“It is,” Ms Smith replied.

Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “This is yet another government announcement that has been conjured up in three days and collapsed in three hours. Ministers should realise that gimmickry will not solve this very serious problem.”

The number of youngsters caught with knives in school has risen more than sevenfold in a decade, figures show. Sentences for pupils found with knives in school have jumped from 902 in 1996, to 6,334 in 2006, the most recent total available.

The row over Ms Smith’s remarks overshadowed moves announced by Gordon Brown at his monthly press conference. Young knife crime offenders would have to clean the streets at weekends and parents who failed to respond to measures to help them to improve discipline could be evicted from their council homes, he said.

Under pressure over public fears about the rise in fatal stabbings, the Prime Minister announced a doubling to 20,000 of families to be subject to “family intervention projects”. They will be drawn from the 110,000 regarded by local authorities in England and Wales as most likely to have children who might offend.

Under a “community payback” scheme, young offenders will have to spend up to 300 hours cleaning streets or doing other menial tasks. “Too many people do not feel safe in the streets, and sometimes even in their homes, as a result of the behaviour of a minority,” Mr Brown said. “We need to make absolutely clear that there are boundaries of acceptable behaviour, that it is completely unacceptable to carry a knife.”

He criticised advice from the Sentencing Guidelines Council to magistrates that possession of a knife could be punished with just a fine, but said that jail or young offender institutions were not always the right approach. “What we should do is say, ‘There is a presumption to prosecute, you will be punished’. That punishment will be severe.” The Home Office said that Ms Smith had never suggested that knife offenders should speak to victims during visits to hospital casualty departments. After reporters were briefed over the weekend that people caught with knives could be made to visit wards to learn about the reality of knife wounds, the Home Office issued a clarification that this would not involve speaking to victims.

Ms Smith told the Commons that offenders might have to meet “healthcare professionals to understand what happens when somebody is stabbed”.

Donald MacKechnie, of the College of Emergency Medicine, rejected the idea of offenders being taken to wards to meet knife victims: “The priority for us working in emergency departments is the patient, not the perpetrator of any crime,” Dr MacKechnie said.

Ms Smith was asked by MPs if the idea had been abandoned. She replied: “We are not, and I have never said we are, proposing to bring young people into wards to see patients.”

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