CHERIE Booth told yesterday how Britain’s knife-crime explosion made her fear for her own children’s safety when they are walking in the streets.

Speaking to MPs, Tony Blair’s wife – who visited Liverpool and other big cities to investigate street violence – said all the evidence pointed to knife crime getting worse under Labour.

But the crisis did not show up in official statistics as they failed to count all the growing number of people rushed into hospital with knife wounds, Ms Booth said.

In Merseyside, the ambulance service told her inquiry that a staggering 50% of knife victims failed to report the attack to police – insisting they had been “using a breadknife, or fell over”.

Furthermore, Ms Booth said, the statistics wrongly failed to count under-16s caught carrying knives, something she described as “almost a new phenomenon”.

Asked about the scale of the problem, she said: “As a parent, I am concerned about what’s happening when my children go on the street. I know I am not unique in that, by any means.”

Ms Booth said 31 teenagers had been fatally stabbed or shot this year – tragedies she blamed on youngsters wrongly believing it was “glamorous” to carry weapons.

However, the QC defended community punishments – rather than automatic jail terms – for some youngsters carrying knives, insisting the courts needed “flexibility” in sentencing.

Ms Booth, who has three sons and a daughter with the former Prime Minister, was invited to speak to the home affairs select committee after leading a Channel 4 “street weapons commission”.

It took evidence in Liverpool from people and groups affected by violent crime, including chief constable Bernard Hogan-Howe and ex-gangster Bob Croxton – who demanded 40-year sentences for gun and knife-carriers.

During yesterday’s evidence session, Ms Booth – who was brought up by a single mother in a working class area of Waterloo – said of knife crime: “The perception is that it is much worse.

“The evidence we heard from people on the street, and backed up by figures we are getting from hospitals, is there are more people with injuries caused this way.”

She added: “Because this is almost a new phenomenon – younger children carrying knives and, sadly, using them – they need to broaden what they are looking at.”

She called for easier access to funding for voluntary groups playing a vital role in helping young people with “limited horizons”.