Serious youth violence is a social emergency and the government needs to get a grip on the problem or more teenagers will die, MPs have said.

A report from the home affairs select committee said there was a “serious mismatch” between the government’s diagnosis of the problem and its solutions, and its serious violence strategy lacked leadership and focus.

Boris Johnson has promised to hire 20,000 police officers and has appointed a new home secretary, Priti Patel, to deliver his vision for law and order.

The committee welcomed more resources for police officers but said more action was needed urgently to improve prevention and early intervention services.

The committee’s chair, Yvette Cooper, said: “Teenagers are dying on our streets and yet our inquiry has found that the government’s response to the rise in serious youth violence is completely inadequate. They just haven’t risen to the scale of the problem. The Home Office has shamefully taken a hands-off approach to this crisis, but it is a national emergency and must be treated like one. They need to get a grip.”

The MPs said they found strong evidence linking deprivation and vulnerability with knife crime and violence, and they called for a national “youth service guarantee” with ringfenced funding for statutory services.

Charities have previously said spending on early intervention fell by 40% in real terms between 2010/11 and 2015/16. Funding of Sure Start centres, which provide access to early intervention services, halved over eight years.

The government hasn't risen to the scale of the problem ... they need to get a grip Yvette Cooper, committee chair

Cooper said: “Serious violence has got worse after a perfect storm of youth service cuts, police cuts, more children being excluded from school and a failure of statutory agencies to keep them safe. The government has a responsibility to deal with this crisis urgently.

“Far more needs to be done to intervene early in young people’s lives, making sure they have safe places to go to and trusted adults to help them and protect them from harm. So much of this support has been stripped away, leaving children vulnerable to exploitation by criminal groups.”

The report said schools in areas with an above-average risk of youth violence should have dedicated police officers, and schools should work to reduce the growing number of exclusions.

Sajid Javid, toward the end of his 15-month tenure as home secretary, was coming round to more innovative approaches to tackling violent crime, treating it as a public health issue, but the committee was sceptical about this shift.

Quick guide Knife crime in the UK Show Hide What is the scale of the problem? Police chiefs have described the recent spate of knife crime as ‘a national emergency’. In the first two months of 2019 there were 17 homicides in London alone, where 35% of all knife crimes are committed. The number of NHS England admissions among people aged 10-19 with knife wounds has risen 60% in five years, surpassing 1,000 last year. The number of knife and offensive weapon offences in England and Wales have risen to their highest level for nearly a decade, with the number of cases dealt with by the criminal justice system up by more than a third since 2015. Knife crime-related offences recorded by the police rose by 8% in England and Wales in 2018. Figures on sentences handed out for such crimes, published by the Ministry of Justice, showed there were 22,041 knife and weapon offences formally dealt with by the criminal justice system in the year ending March 2019. This is the highest rate since 2010, when the number was 23,667.

What happens to people caught with knives? In the year ending March 2019, 37% of knife and offensive weapon offences resulted in an immediate custodial sentence, compared with 22% in 2009, when the data was first published. The average length of the custodial sentences rose to the longest in a decade, from 5.5 months to 8.1 months. Are younger people more at risk of being involved in knife crime? The MoJ figures revealed that the number of juvenile offenders convicted or cautioned for possession or threats using a knife or offensive weapon increased by almost half (48%) between the year ending March 2015 and the year ending March 2019. The increase in adult offenders over the same period was smaller, at 31%. However, adult offenders still accounted for 74% of the total increase in cautions and convictions received for those offences in that period. What are the government doing about knife crime? In March 2019 chancellor, Philip Hammond, handed an extra £100m to police forces in England and Wales after a spate of fatal stabbings led to a renewed focus on rising knife crime and police resources. In the same month more than 10,000 knives were seized and 1,372 suspects arrested during a week-long national knife crime crackdown. Officers carried out 3,771 weapons searches, during which 342 knives were found. Another 10,215 were handed in as part of amnesties.

A new Offensive Weapons Act was passed in May 2019, making it illegal to possess dangerous weapons including knuckledusters, zombie knives and death star knives. It also made it a criminal offence to dispatch bladed products sold online without verifying the buyer is over 18.

“The rhetoric about a public health approach is right but too often that’s all it is – rhetoric,” Cooper said. “There are no clear targets or milestones, and no mechanisms to drive progress.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Boris Johnston has said he will hire 20,000 more police officers. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

The serious violence strategy was launched by Javid’s predecessor, Amber Rudd, who stepped down weeks later in the fallout from the Windrush scandal. Javid took up the issue and has sat on a number of meetings of the serious violence taskforce and has announced a number of funding rounds for various services.

Anne Longfield, the children’s commissioner for England, said: “The new prime minister and home secretary must show their commitment to tackling youth violence. That will require more than summits and meetings. We need a large-scale and long-term plan that includes a new generation of youth workers, more investment in early years and troubled families programmes, better children’s mental health services, a strategy to tackle school exclusions and keeping schools open for longer to help protect some of the most vulnerable children.

“Too many families and communities are being wrecked and too many childhoods broken by the scourge of gangs and criminal exploitation. Until the government treats this as a top priority, young people will continue to be caught up in gangs and serious violence, and children will continue to die on our streets.”

Sam Royston, the director of policy and research at the Children’s Society, said: “This report must act as a wake-up call to the government to do far more to tackle growing levels of serious violence and knife crime affecting vulnerable young people, which are leaving some living in fear.

“We see the devastating impact of violence on children who are cynically groomed to commit crimes like trafficking drugs in county lines operations, and who may be coerced to carry out violence against rival criminal groups. These children should be recognised as victims of exploitation, not end up being criminalised.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The committee’s assessment fails to recognise the full range of urgent action the government is taking to keep our communities safe – including extra police powers and resources. The prime minister and home secretary last week announced the recruitment of 20,000 more officers and a new national policing board, which will meet for the first time today, to drive the response to critical issues including serious violence.

“Police funding is increasing by more than £1bn this year, including council tax and £100m for forces worst affected by violent crime.”