Britain has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Western Europe and the second highest, after the USA, in the world. Depressingly, the map of teenage pregnancy is the map of British deprivation. In my own constituency, the Rhondda, the figures are striking. There were 101 live births to teenagers last year. That means that nearly 1 in 25 of all the 2,325 teenage women in the Rhondda gave birth in 2006. It was not an unusual year. And the Rhondda does not have the highest rate for teenage mums in England or in Wales.
Everybody wants to tackle the problem. Churches complain about it. Children’s charities worry about it. Local authorities fret about it. Parents and teachers are anxious about it. The government is committed to action and has managed to cut the rate since its peak between 1995 and 1997 by roughly 12 per cent.
But the truth is that in Britain this is proving a remarkably intransigent problem. Cracking it will require far greater political determination. We need to be prepared to challenge deeply held prejudices and perceptions about sex, about education, about growing up and about what the state should provide. We need to face the fact that youngsters are sexualised very early on television, in popular music, in young people’s magazines – and that the whole pressure from the media is towards early (and incidentally, often illegally early) sexual experience. And we need to look at other countries’ experiences – because they have been far more successful in cutting teenage pregnancy rates.
This is not a question of being more liberal or more conservative. Natural conservatives have to acknowledge that their opposition to good statutory sex education and contraception is part of the problem. And liberals need to come to terms with the fact that laissez faire cultural attitudes to sex have equally contributed to the soaring rates and that many girls, especially in the poorest communities, choose to become pregnant as young teenagers.
Of course many teenage mums, against the odds, are immensely successful parents. And the last thing they need from politicians is a self-righteous lecture. But tackling teenage pregnancy is one of the most important challenges we face in areas like the Rhondda. It is one of the major reasons that poverty is handed down through the generations. It perpetuates the vicious cycle of underachievement, benefit dependency, ill health, lack of aspiration, poor parenting and child poverty that blights so many areas of Britain. Judgemental attitudes are unlikely to work. Many teenagers just snort at ‘abstinence only’ messages.
But we have to build in secure incentives for teenagers not to choose teenage parenthood as an alternative to education or employment. Whatever our personal attitudes to sex, we have to look at what works – and what is not working now. It is an urgent problem. Some may say that it is notoriously difficult for politicians or for the government to shift social attitudes, but I am certain we can make a difference.