Police officers should be exempt from race discrimination laws in order to target black youths in high crime areas, the former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has said.

Trevor Phillips said that "white liberals" need to stop "hand-wringing" and admit the truth that the wave of knife crime is black children killing black children.

He called for officers to target high-risk inner-city areas and to be exempt from laws which prevent them discriminating on the basis of someone's race or ethnic origin.

Police dealing with gangs also need to be given greater powers akin to anti-terror laws which would allow them to detain the leaders who give the orders rather than wielding the knife, Mr Phillips said.

The comments come amid a rising wave of violence which has seen 250 stabbing deaths in the UK this year, with five of those murders occurring in London in the past nine days.

Describing the dead as "sacrifices in an unwinnable war", Mr Phillips said that the political response had been "pathetic" and too focused on police numbers when there is no evidence that this will help.

Writing in the Mail on Sunday, he said: "First we need to be clear about who is dying and who is doing the killing, and we must be honest that there is a racial component to the violence."