Ministers have failed to get a grip on the national knife crime crisis, former Met Police Commissoner Lord Hogan-Howe warned today.

After a weekend in which two innocent 17-year-olds were stabbed to death, he said ministers needed to appoint a "leader" who would focus day-to-day on reversing the highest rate of knife crime attacks and killings on record.

Citing the £1 billion about to be invested in boosting police numbers which have fallen by 22,000 since 2010, he said: "It’s perfectly right for the Home Office, the Government to ask what are you going to do with that money.

"You want to know day by day what is going to be delivered. I don’t get that sense of grip.

"What [the Government] has not got is a catalyst to pull it together. It needs a leader who will say day after day, what are the police doing, what are the other agencies doing, how can we get the charities to work together.

"If it’s not treated as a crisis, it will take another two years before we see action."

Lord Hogan-Howe believed the £1 billion could pay for an extra 22,000 officers, to replace those lost since 2010, but ministers were leaving policing decisions to the 43 forces.