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Mrs. Maria Fyfe (Glasgow, Maryhill): Is the hon. Lady aware that SPUC campaigns outside Boots in Glasgow every week, giving out grossly misleading leaflets that accuse Boots of breaking the law? That is true neither of Boots nor of the community and mental health service, which has been co-operating with it.
Dr. Tonge: I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. I am well aware of what is happening at Boots in Glasgow. I hope to go there in April to see for myself. Organisations such as SPUC are disgraceful. They produce inaccurate and misleading information, and I have been the target of some of their campaigns.
The Government must tackle that lobby head-on and spin on behalf of our young people. Better, more honest sex education and contraception provision will bring down the teenage pregnancy rate, as it has in other European countries. While the Government have been thinking about the issue, tens of thousands of teenagers have had unwanted pregnancies. About 100,000 pregnancies have occurred, with perhaps 60,000 or 70,000 babies being born as a result. That represents a huge number of broken lives and an awful lot of misery, unhappiness and potential trouble for the future.
The Minister for Public Health (Ms Tessa Jowell):
I congratulate the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) on securing the debate, on her speech and on her record as a campaigner for what is right on this issue.
We do not do well by our teenage parents. As the hon. Lady has said, our rates are four times higher than in France, twice as high as in Germany and seven times as high as in the Netherlands. More teenagers become pregnant in this country than anywhere else in western Europe. That is why the Prime Minister asked the social exclusion unit to report to him on ways to reduce teenage conceptions and support vulnerable teenage parents to break the cycle of exclusion that the situation almost inevitably brings for them and their babies.
I assure the hon. Lady that the report of the social exclusion unit will be submitted to the Prime Minister shortly and will be published within the next two months or so. The exercise has been exhaustive, involving wide consultation, with the clear purpose of seeking practical solutions and building a consensus for the action that the Government must lead. Action must be guided not by myth or prejudice, but by fact and the best available evidence of what works.
Let us look briefly at what happens to young women who become teenage mothers. Half the under-16s who become pregnant will have an abortion. Teenage mothers are more likely to suffer trouble with their pregnancy and birth and are much more likely to experience post-natal depression than older mothers. The infant mortality rate for babies of teenage mothers is more than 50 per cent. higher than the national average. The prospects in later life are poor, too. Teenage mothers and their children are more likely to live on benefits and to live on them for longer than their peers. As the hon. Lady made clear, there is no evidence beyond anecdote--which is easily deployed--that the benefit system acts as a direct incentive to any young woman to become pregnant.
The social exclusion unit's forthcoming report will look at the prevention of teenage pregnancy and the support necessary for teenage parents and their children. We already have a good idea of which young women are most at risk of becoming pregnant too early. Often, they have low educational attainment; their families have had financial problems; they have had emotional problems; their mothers were probably teenage mothers; and they wanted to be a young mother. Young women with those characteristics are 19 times more likely to become teenage mothers than young women with none of them.
Mr. Alan Johnson (Hull, West and Hessle):
My right hon. Friend will be aware that the city of Hull has the highest rate of pregnancies among 13 to 15-year-olds in the country, and one of the highest rates in western Europe. However, we managed to get a multi-agency approach to the problem only when we were allocated a health action zone. Will she ensure that the lessons learned in Hull are looked at closely and spread to other areas?
Ms Jowell:
We will be delighted to learn from my hon. Friend's experience of tackling the problem in Hull. I hope that the implementing action following the social exclusion unit report will build on best practice and will make sure that that is spread as widely as possible.
Dr. Tonge:
So far, the Minister has dealt with teenage mothers and their babies, and with what the Government
Ms Jowell:
I will deal with those points in the short time remaining.
Social exclusion is not only associated with teenage parenthood for young women: like teenage mothers, teenage fathers are likely to share characteristics such as low educational achievement, lack of qualifications and a family background of financial problems. Teenage boys and girls who have been in trouble with the police are more likely than their peers to become teenage parents. It was recently estimated that 25 per cent. of young offenders were also fathers.
Teenage pregnancy is a problem simply because teenage parents have to look after a baby when they are little more than children themselves. They are expected to cope with one of the most difficult things that any adult is asked to do--to raise and nurture a child--without the emotional and financial stability that come as part of adulthood. In many cases, teenage mothers are also lone mothers. That puts extra pressure on them in terms of child care, returning to education and future employment prospects--all issues which I hope that the social exclusion unit report will address.
Mrs. Gorman:
Is the Minister aware that the Childline report said that more than half of the 7,800 young girls who called over the past two years were worried and wanted emergency help? Is she aware that it is difficult for them to find that help, and that many accident and emergency units refuse to give emergency contraception? Does she agree that the Government should do more to examine the opportunities so that young, terrified girls can get a friendly helping hand and emergency contraception?
Ms Jowell:
Clearly, in an ideal world, young girls who are little more than children would not be having sexual relations. They have sexual relations for some of the reasons that I have outlined. Given that about one in five girls under 16 are sexually active, it is important that they have access to advice and information. Where that does not come from their parents at home, it is important to have accessible agencies for young people to turn to for help--often in the kind of crisis identified by the Childline research.
Teenage pregnancy is both a cause and a consequence of social exclusion. Many teenage mothers are care leavers, or have been excluded from school. For them, life was never going to be easy, and having a child too young makes it all the more difficult.
To have a long-term answer to the problem--and long-term success in reducing our rates of teenage pregnancy--we have to understand why the rates are so high in the first place. The short answer is that too many teenagers are having sex too young, and too many are having sex that is unprotected. That is one of the key reasons for our much higher rate of teenage pregnancy, and that marks us out from many European countries where the rate is lower.
Contraception rates for young people here are half the rates in the United States or in a number of European countries. The Childline research may shed some light on precisely the kind of problems that we must address.
Mrs. Gorman:
Will the Minister give way?
Ms Jowell:
No, I will not. If I do, I will not have a chance to finish dealing with the points that have been raised.
We know that young people believe that they are immortal, and that is why there is such a clear link between the risks that young people take in terms of unprotected sex, smoking, alcohol, drugs and even dangerous driving. More than 90,000 teenagers become pregnant every year, and nearly 500,000 sexually transmitted infections in teenagers are diagnosed every year.
The bottom line for our approach to teenage sex must be to ensure that teenagers are more aware of the risks attached to sex too early, and that they have the tools necessary to wait until they are adult and ready. It is important that those who do have sex have access to reliable contraception and advice to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection.
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