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Teenage Pregnancy
1 pm
Dr. Jenny Tonge (Richmond Park): I want to address a problem that I consider to be a national scandal--teenage pregnancy. Many hon. Members will have heard on Radio 4 this morning about the Childline report which states that more 14 and 15-year-old girls call in about pregnancy and the fear of pregnancy than about any other issue. I am well aware that the Government have promised a review on the subject. It was promised last October, but it has not yet been produced. I am sure that we shall now be told that it will be published very soon, but I applied for today's debate none the less because I am sick of promises. I want some firm commitments. Twelve or 18 months is long enough to wait. How much longer will it be?
In 1997--the last year for which I have figures--95,000 teenagers became pregnant. Of those, 8,300 were under 16. A total of 33,381 of those girls had abortions. It is a huge tragedy that 95,000 young lives were ruined in some way and 62,000 babies were born to mothers most of whom were still at school and unable to support them.
It is even more shaming that the United Kingdom is top of the league in Europe for teenage pregnancies. In the most recent population trends published by the Office for National Statistics, the United Kingdom was top in respect of births per 1,000 women aged between 15 and 19. Our current rate is 30 per 1,000 girls. In Denmark, the figure is only eight per 1,000 girls and in the Netherlands only four girls in 1,000 become pregnant.
Thirty years ago, there were 50 pregnancies per 1,000 girls, so the figure has fallen. But in Denmark 30 years ago the figure was also 50 per 1,000, and that country has managed to reduce teenage pregnancies to eight per 1,000 girls. As I said, the incidence of teenage pregnancy is a national scandal and I am ashamed that it is happening in my country.
Let us look at the reasons. There is no doubt that we live in a society that flaunts sex at every available opportunity. Cars, chocolate bars, deodorants--you name it--are frequently sold using sexual images. Newspapers, magazines and television programmes are full of the antics of Presidents, royalty, pop stars and, dare I say it, some hon. Members. Films, plays and television shows all contain sexual activity. It is everywhere. Even Cardinal Hume has noticed. At the weekend he declared that
Is it any wonder that, surrounded by sexual images, young people join in? They do not want to be left out of the excitement. Nobody on television is worried about contraception, sexually transmitted diseases or AIDS, so why should they worry? When they add to the brew copious amounts of alcohol on Friday and Saturday nights, they are away.
All that is common to other European countries. So why do so many more teenagers get pregnant in the United Kingdom? Are parental attitudes or education to
blame? Unless we provide proper sex education and services that give teenagers a balanced message and counteract the excitement factor, things will never change.
Let us get rid of one myth before we progress any further. I have heard it said so often--it was said again on the radio this morning--that young girls get pregnant so that they can claim benefit and get council flats. In fact, the majority of teenage mothers have no idea about housing or benefits before they get pregnant. There is no need to take my word for it; the Policy Studies Institute has conducted several studies on the subject. Once a teenage mother has a baby or two, however, we have to do something about her housing, looking after her babies and giving her benefit.
Let us dispel another myth--that teenagers get pregnant because of sex education, contraception and abortion advice. The right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe), who I hoped would be here today said during last Sunday's "On the Record" that
Despite the best efforts of me and my colleagues in the national health service, the Conservatives cut family planning clinics by half countrywide. We all know that general practitioners became overburdened and the number of school nurses was severely reduced. I cannot find the national figure, but in Cambridge, for example, not only are there no school nurses, but there are no health visitors either. What does the Minister intend to do about Cambridge?
According to Childline, the majority of the 7,000 youngsters who had rung in about pregnancy-related issues said that they were not aware of having received any sex education at school.
Sex education still remains at the whim of school governors. Some education authorities and schools do their best, but, countrywide, sex education is scanty, rarely repeated and hardly ever linked to the essential advice to teenagers about where to go for advice on sexual matters, contraception, abortion and sexually transmitted diseases. The link between education and advice on where to find services has been highlighted in many studies on the issue.
Mrs. Teresa Gorman (Billericay):
I agree with the hon. Lady that family planning units are a vital part of our services to the community and I deplore the fact that they were run down. Does she agree that the Government should encourage initiatives such as that between Boots the chemist and the local health authority in Glasgow, whereby youngsters can go into Boots and get advice?
Dr. Tonge:
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention and I entirely agree. In fact, I was about to mention the experiment that Boots conducted in Glasgow. Incidentally, it has been very successful and many young people have used the service. We need more such projects.
Other European countries provide more than adequate family planning and sexual health services and take a refreshingly frank and objective approach to the issue. Rates of teenage pregnancy in the Netherlands and
Denmark are a fraction of ours. Proper sex education and services are provided free of charge and advertised. People discuss matters more frankly.
In the United Kingdom, we are still bound by Victorian values such as, "Do as I say, not as I do" and, "These things must not be discussed with young people." We must educate ourselves to talk to children and encourage peer group speak-easy projects--a concept of which the Minister is aware--for children and for parents who find it difficult to talk to their children about such matters.
Today, I am calling on the Government to include several measures in their review, whenever it is published. First, there should be a compulsion on schools to deliver sex education from the beginning of primary school to school leaving age as part of the national curriculum. Sex education needs to be repeated. It is no good having a one-off lesson from the shy biology mistress or the local doctor; the message must be repeated and changed appropriately as children get older. It must be regularly assessed by the Department of Health or the Department for Education and Employment. That must be linked with proper provision of family planning, abortion and STD services for young people, via local family planning services and perhaps school nurses.
The irony is that when we need those services the most, they have been cut. Responsibility for them will lie with primary care groups. That is another concern. Who will ensure the provision of adequate family planning and youth counselling services if the primary care groups are to be so overstretched? In the absence of such services, trained pharmacists and the high street outlets that the hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) mentioned need to come into the equation.
To improve accessibility, we must deregulate some methods of contraception. Emergency contraception, which I spoke about in the House some months ago, must be made available when it is needed. It is needed in emergencies and should be as readily available as condoms. It should not be necessary to make an appointment to see a general practitioner to get emergency contraception.
Will the Minister assure us that she will support people such as Viv Crouch, the school nurse in Bath who has set up an advisory service in her school and directs young people to the right provision of services? The Minister should also support the Boots clinic in Glasgow. Those are examples of people and businesses taking the initiative. That must become more widespread. Such initiatives are needed in every city.
Young people need readily available, confidential, anonymous and non-judgmental advice from the time of their first sexual experiences. Let us stop pretending that young people do not or should not have sex. They do. As I have said, times have changed. I am sorry about that in many ways, but that is the way it is. People do not have to start so young, however. In the Netherlands, the average age at which young people start having sex is much older than in the United Kingdom and the provision of services there is much better. From 30 years' experience, I know that the more education--general and sexual--and the more advice and medical help teenagers can get, the more likely they are to delay their first sexual intercourse and the less likely they are to become pregnant.
Education is probably the main reason why the UK compares so badly with its European counterparts. We have a higher proportion of badly educated young people from unstable backgrounds. That situation is repeated from generation to generation. Putting teenage mothers into hostels and preaching at them will not help, but if we give them opportunities to return to education by providing creche facilities--incidentally, when are we going to get creche facilities for all the mothers in the House of Commons?--and proper support for their babies, we may prevent those babies from making the same mistakes when they grow up and stop them repeating the cycle.
"society is obsessed with sex and falling apart because of it."
I am inclined to agree with him, but there is no turning the clock back. We are approaching the 21st century. Society has changed. The genie is out of the bottle and cannot be put back.
"the rise in teenage pregnancies in this country has gone hand-in-hand with increased sex education and family planning advice."
I respect the right hon. Lady. She is honest and resolute in her views, but she is wrong on this issue.
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