Mr and Mrs Lappin spoke movingly to hundreds of schoolchildren at Liverpool One’s Odeon cinema earlier in the day as part of a police education package designed to make future generations think before they pick up a knife.

They were also given a talk by a nursing technician from A&E at the Royal who showed them graphic images of the type of horrific knife wounds they see regularly.

But Mr Johnson didn’t find time to talk to Cllr Phil Moffatt, who he has been promising to meet for the last eight months to discuss gun crime.

Despite his office telling the ECHO twice a meeting would happen, Mr Johnson said he only had a limited amount of time and couldn’t fit the Croxteth councillor into his day in the city.

Cllr Moffatt, who confronted the Home Secretary at a meeting at the Devonshire House hotel, said: “Then-Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was quick to be seen after Rhys Jones was shot and talk about getting guns off the streets to the national media but despite shootings continuing in Croxteth, the current Home Secretary does not give us the time of day.

“These are broken promises to the people of my constituency.”