Middle class drug users should feel “guilt and responsibility” for fuelling the fatal stabbings blighting the UK, the Justice Secretary has said.

David Gauke said those who take cocaine at dinner parties are responsible for fuelling the violence on city streets.

“People who do that have to recognise they are fuelling the industry that’s resulting in the knife crimes, resulting in the difficulties we’re having in prisons,” Mr Gauke told Sky’s Ridge on Sunday.

“There’s a responsibility for middle class people that take cocaine at a dinner party that when they see a story of a 15-year-old boy stabbed in Hackney (east London) they should feel a degree of guilt and responsibility.”

Mr Gauke’s words came as Britain suffers a knife-crime epidemic.

Police Federation deputy treasurer Simon Kempton has also blamed the wealthy for creating the demand for cocaine, while security minister Ben Wallace warned the UK is “fast becoming the biggest consumer” of the Class A in Europe.