Knife crime has soared to a five-year high since Theresa May curbed police use of stop and search tactics.

Offences involving a blade or other sharp weapon rose by 14 per cent to 32,448 in the year to December 2016, the biggest total since 2011.

Police chiefs fear they are seeing the first signs of a knife crime epidemic in major cities, including five young men stabbed to death in London this year.

FOUR FATAL STABBINGS IN CAPITAL IN LAST MONTH ALONE Malachi Brooks, a 22-year-old carpenter, was fatally stabbed on March, 28 yards from Thomas's School in Battersea, which Prince George will attend from September. The same day, promising footballer Abdullahi Tarabi, 19, collapsed in an alleyway and later died after being knifed in the stomach as he fled two people near his home in Northolt. Jordan Wright, 19, was found with multiple stab wounds near a park in Blackheath on April 19. The apprentice builder was taken to hospital but died a short time later. Aspiring business student Syed Jamanoor Islam died in his mother’s arms on April 11. The 20-year-old was set upon by a group of men yards from his family home in Mile End. Advertisement

In 2015, then home secretary Mrs May introduced reforms to reduce the ‘excessive and inappropriate’ use of stop and search – amid concerns they fuelled resentment by disproportionately targeting ethnic minorities.

Theresa May campaigning in Leeds on Thursday. Knife crime has risen since the curb of stop and search

But she was criticised by senior police chiefs, including then Scotland Yard commissioner Sir Bernard-Hogan Howe, who blamed a rise in stabbings and gang violence on a reduction in the tactic.

As the decade began, recorded knife crime in England and Wales was falling but in the past two years the trend has reversed, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The rise comes against a 57 per cent fall in the number of stop and searches. A record low of 387,448 checks were made in 2015-16 compared to 904,089 stops in 2013-14. David Green of think-tank Civitas said: ‘Police have been deterred from carrying out as many stop and searches as would be justified by the prevalence of knife crime because of the fear of being accused of racial discrimination.’

Ex-prison governor David Wilson, now criminology professor at Birmingham City University, said: ‘The reduction in stop and search is undoubtedly one factor in a cocktail that has led to an increase in people carrying knives.

‘If people feel less likely to get stopped, they will feel emboldened to go out with a knife.’

This month, the Metropolitan Police warned knife crime was rocketing as youngsters thought it was ‘trendy’ to carry a weapon. Lord Paddick, Lib Dem home affairs spokesman, said: ‘The reduction in visible policing is clearly a reason behind the rise in knife crime – both in terms of more young people carrying knives to feel safe and the work of the police being hampered.’

Including experimental statistics on fraud and computer misuse offences, there were an estimated 11.5m incidents of crime in Britain in the year ending December 2016 (file image)

Bill Skelly, of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said: ‘Forces will continue to target habitual offenders and conduct wide-ranging proactive operations to seize thousands of illegal weapons before they can be used to cause harm.’

A Tory spokesman said: ‘With our action plan to tackle crime and our support for the police, we have made Britain an even safer place.’