Bloody hell Unity. Every single time I read your articles, you just thrown on several layers of pomposity in an effort to make yourself sound knowledgable but actually you have little or nothing to back up your arguments.

First and foremost, the graphs that you produced are for female conception rates, NOT for actual babies carried to term – which is what the vast majority of people are referring to when they talk about teenage pregnances. Where is your data on this? Furthermore, the ONS shows that since 1997 teenage conceptions has gone UP for under 16’s, not down. A minor oversight by you, don’t you think? Abortion rates are also rising, which will obviously affect the number of babies being carried to term, but teenagers having abortions in greater numbers every year hardly paints a pretty picture.

According to the ONS, 4 out of every 100 16-year-olds are now getting pregnant every year, as are 2 out of 100 15-year-olds and 1 out of every 100 14-year-olds and under. Doesn’t quite fit with your agenda, does it?

What we can see in comment #1 is a classic moving of the goalposts, as he tries to redefine the phrase ‘teenage pregnancy has increased exponentially’ so ‘teenage’ means ‘under 16′; ‘pregnancy’ means ‘giving birth’; and ‘exponentially’ means ‘a little bit’.

Abortion rates are also rising, which will obviously affect the number of babies being carried to term, but teenagers having abortions in greater numbers every year hardly paints a pretty picture.

This is my favourite part.

The figures show conceptions are going down.
A Tory thinks abortion rates are going up. (he didn’t provide support for this. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.
Therefore, according to him, ‘real pregnancies’ (births) must be going… up.

This is a different approach to maths than the one I learned at school.

The BMJ have also picked up on this trend

The main method used to measure teenage pregnancy in the UK is the rate of conception for women younger than 18 expressed as the number of pregnancies per 1000 15-17 year old girls. The latest data from the Office for National Statistics, published in 2007, show that the conception rate for under-18s in England and Wales fell from 46.6 conceptions per 1000 girls in 1998 to 41.1 in 2005. Rates are higher in urban than in rural areas, and in poorer areas of the country than in those that are better off. This is reflected in the regional figures: the highest rates are seen in the old industrial area of the north east, the lowest in the more prosperous counties of the south east (Table 1).

So a modest fall in rates rather than an exponential increase ………………. BUT

Rates of teenage pregnancy in the UK are still higher than anywhere else in western Europe. The UK’s teenage birth rate is five times that in the Netherlands, three times higher than in France, and double the rate in Germany. Other English speaking countries, such as Canada and New Zealand, have teenage birth rates higher than the UK, and in the US the rate is more than double that in the UK, though there has been a steep decline in US teenage pregnancy rates since 1990 3 – the conception rate among 15-17 year olds fell by 33% between 1991 and 2000 (4.3% per year); the birth rate by 36%.

Parenting is a tough job and personally I have fears about children parenting children – but of course demonising such families is hardly likely to be helpful, either to the families themselves, or the wider community.

I have already altered the ‘exponential’ comment to more accurate wording and apologised for not looking at the right statistic. I’m perfectly happy to admit that this was wrong.

That said, I almost entirely disagree with your sentients and with your reasoning, Unity, and I intend to write a post explaining why but, since I am at work, it shall have to wait for lunch.

Thank you for such an in-depth response, though.

“disagree with your sentients”?! Wow, that came out wrong…

Sentiments.

Abortion rates are going up according to the ONS – go and look at the figures yourself.

I wasn’t talking about Stu Sharpe’s comments, I was highlighting how weak Unity’s arguments are because the phrase ‘teenage pregnancies’ is used all the way through the discussion of welfare dependency, benefits and sexually transmitted diseases. Read it again.

Either Unity talks about conception rates – which have gone up for under 16s under Labour – or talks about live births – which no data is provided on. Time to make your mind up.

Sorry, what was that the conception rate for under 16s?

This is a general point really:

Please can more people use graphs? – it helps to be able to see the data to back up an argument.

Firstly, my data only went back to 1999 which is annoying – and the rate has risen since 1999. I could reasonably argue that any policies that Labour introduced would not have had an immediate effect so the 1999 figure (or even more recent comparisons) are in fact more valid – but no doubt I would be accused of splitting hairs.

Secondly, you are talking about conception RATES, not absolute conception NUMBERS (the former being heavily distorted by a growing population). In 1999, there were 7900 conceptions for under-16s but in 2007 it was 8200. For the sake of comparison, in 1991 this figure was just 7500.

Thirdly, still no data on live births. With the number of abortions for under-16s going up considerably under Labour it would be interesting to see how live births among teenagers has changed. That said, more conceptions plus more abortions hardly paints a glowing picture of teenagers under a Labour government.

A&E Charge Nurse:

Yes, its perfectly true that our own teenage pregnancy rates are significantly higher than those on the continent, much less than America’s and roughly on a par with other English speaking Commonwealth countries, for the most part because we haven’t brought our own rates down over the last 40 years anything like as successfully as they have across Europe, and especially across Northern Europe.

The question is, why?

There are two obvious differences we can look at.

One is differences in the approach to sex and relationships education in schools.

The Northern European approach, of which the Netherlands provides the best model, eschews crude religious moralising in favour of educating young people to make their own, fully informed choices and raises an interesting philosophical point because it shows that educating young people to become fully functioning moral agents is more successful in reducing teenage pregnancy than simply trying to impose a specific, religion-based, view of sexual morality.

The second is that these countries followed the European Social Democratic economic model over this period rather than the free market Anglo-Saxon model, so higher taxes and a more expansive and generous welfare state actually leads, in Northern Europe, to a reduction in teenage pregnancies.

The logical inference seems to be that if you live in high tax economy with an expensive but generous welfare state, the fact that you pay a lot for your welfare system but get good value for money if and when you use it tend to promote social responsibility. Because they value their welfare system and pay a lot to maintain it, people in countries like Sweden and Germany are much less inclined to abuse the system they’ve got.

Leters from a Tory – statistics fail.

Conception RATES are not distorted by population numbers, they are given as a % (or per ‘000) figure. Conception NUMBERS *will* be distorted by a growing population.

For example, if the conception numbers are 100 for a population of 10,000, then the conception rate will be 1 in 100 (1%).
If you then compare this with a much lower conception number, say 50, but have this in a population of only 1,000, then the conception rate will be 5%. Yet, from your statistical analysis, this will be the better figure because the total number of conceptions is lower.

LFAT:

Sorry, but did you actually pass the stats module when were you were at university?

Look, since 1999, the conception rate in under 16’s has varied between a maximum of 8.2-8.3 per 1,000 (1999,2000 and 2007) and a minimum of 7.5 per 1000 in 2004. The eight year average is actually 7.95 conceptions per 1,000, so you’ve got annual variance over the period of only +/- 0.4 conceptions per 1,000, which is hardly a significant change in any given year. That’s about 300-400 pregnancies in a population of roughly 1 million young women.

What that shows is, basically, a stable trend. In effect, what you’re looking at amounts to a structural conception rate – unless you’re going to resort to fitting all teenage girls with a time-locked chastity belt at the age of 11 then there will always be a certain percentage who will get pregnant because a certain percentage of teenagers will start shagging before they reach 16 years of age, and right now that just happens to be about 0.8%.

So, what we can say it that the government’s efforts to reduce levels of teenage pregnancy have been moderate successful with the 16-19 age group but have had little or no real impact on under 16’s, where the overall trend is broadly stable – and this is true for all ages under 16. If you look at under 14s, the number of very young girls getting pregnant each year has been bouncing along at between 150 and 300 for the last 30-40 years or so.

So we have to ask the question why it is that 16-19 year olds appear to be getting the message but under 16s aren’t and at least part of the answer lies in the fact that once you hit 16 and society starts to treat you more like an adult then its that point that become more aware of the fact that you have to take responsibility for yourself and plan for your own future, and that you can’t (and won’t) be shielded from the harsh realities of life by your parents in quite the same way that your were as a child.

Often, when you’re dealing with under 16s who fall pregnant, you’ll find that you’re dealing with individuals who have a foreshortened perspective on life. In poorer areas, in particular, you find that they’re often the kids who have no particular ambitions and no sense of future directions or goals beyond leaving school at 16. They don’t think in terms of their long term future and, hence, don’t really think in terms of the long term consequences of a pregnancy when they become sexually active.

There’s actually quite a lot of complex psychology involved in working with under 16s around teenage pregnancy and much of that is about trying to broaden their horizons and get to think about their long term plans and aspirations, thing they often lack compared to kids from wealthier backgrounds who, if the don’t have absolutely clear goals, at least aspire to going on to further and higher education, which gives them a broader perspective on life and on their own future.

That’s the point I’m trying to drive at here – if you’re serious about reducing the current levels of teenage pregnancy then you’ve got to raise aspirations and give young people a sense that not becoming pregnant is something that’s in there best interests because it limits their future prospects, but to do that you’ve got to ensure that these kids can see that they have future prospects. If all the can see is future life on the dole or stacking shelves in the local supermarket then you’re fighting a losing battle.

well done Unity, this has just made the Guardian’s best of the Web CIF pick

In this, there are two myths that need to be challenged and overthrown, the first of which is the myth than suggests that people actively choose to live on welfare benefits –

I was aware of these stats . Polly Toynbee`s , better or worse , is full of this sort of thing . Everything has got better hasn’t it despite the fixed impression people .Unity considers to be beneath him , they have not . ( Those awful common Daily Mail Readers who probably cannot race their ancestry to Huguenot aristocrats ).My suspicion would be that the South Sea bubble have been sleep walking in made employment relatively attractive and we have also employed endless bods to go around chivvying at vast expense which cannot hurt. These sunny uplands have a big dirty cloud approaching . If you look at the “Better or Worse “ argument of which this is typical , it is striking how it is falling to pieces at the first sign of choppy economic water .
A more reasonable view would be that in a developed economy during a period of astonishing affluence it is staggering how little progress has been made and this is quite obviously because of the choice to live on welfare and more importantly acquire housing .If you are under the impression that no teenager makes a choice to have a child for these reasons then I must introduce you to our next door neighbour. She was forced to adopt her daughter’s daughter for reasons to upsetting to repeat following just such a decision .

You can claim that cash for kids does not have an effect until you are slightly pinky red in the face . It is simply not true and everyone knows it except you and that grovelling little coward Pasinkski . Your suggestion that more hand outs would help is lunatic and you have no idea what may or may not happen in Northern Europe where the value of free house is not remotely comparable to this country ,.,..just to mention one of a zillion reasons not to make the quasi religious leap of faith you make .

It reminds me of the old thing about murder rates being higher in capital punishment countries being proof it is not s deterrent. It would deter me ! So before we get into international comparisons why not rule the idiotic out of court and , look a bit harder.

LFAT:

AS you mention abortion rates, the ONS data shows a 7% increase in the number of under 16 conceptions ending in abortion between 1998 and 2007 (up from 55% to just over 62%).

All of which proves nothing whatsoever unless you make some effort to understand why more under 16s are option for an abortion as a way out.

Unfortunately, the fudge that Parliament adopted in 1967, in which ’social’ abortions were classified under a broad mental health categorisation, means that in the 40 year since abortions were legalised there has been no substantive research in the UK into the question of why women choose to have an abortion.

There have, however, been at least two large scale cohort studies in the US which did try to address this question, both of which showed that the two main reasons women give for having an abortion (and in both cases over 70% of women in the study gave one or both) were that they had fallen pregnant at a time when they were not in a stable relationship and that they felt that they lacked the financial means to adequately support a child, both of which are eminently responsible reasons for not wanting to have a baby at a given time.

Yes, it would be preferable if there had been no pregnancy in the first place, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with the availability or legality of abortion and limiting access to abortion will not reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, it will only fuel ‘abortion tourism’ amongst the better off and lead to the return of the backstreet abortionist in poorer areas.

Unity were you are that teen pregnancies are a worse problem amongst black girls . Does this prove that being black makes you irresponsible ? ( using your the head causes the tail version of reality ).Tell me , if I were to offer you a large sum of money to respond to this question would it make you more or less likely to ? Presumably less by the ytinU method .

Incidentally you never did explain to me why it was that we cannot abort live babies
in the first six months there is no difference between them and the unborn and if you
compare us to our near relatives the human baby is actually born in the embryonic
stage ( This is because our heads are so big ). Hat would knock this problem on the
head , literally .

I know you like to apply science, (after all when did scientists ever support perverse evil regimes just so they could cut up live subjects or anything…that was religious people surely ?) isn`t it about time we stooped shily shallying around and chucked them in the Thames ? Or would that” pollute the environment I mean something really serious like that ?

“That’s the point I’m trying to drive at here – if you’re serious about reducing the current levels of teenage pregnancy then you’ve got to raise aspirations and give young people a sense that not becoming pregnant is something that’s in there best interests because it limits their future prospects, but to do that you’ve got to ensure that these kids can see that they have future prospects. If all the can see is future life on the dole or stacking shelves in the local supermarket then you’re fighting a losing battle.”

How the hell do you actually do that?

i think its easier to get the scientists to start inventing a 100% effective 5 year contraceptive that can be inplanted so deep inside it can’t be scratched out.

I’m sure that’s gotta be easier then giving people “the audacity of hope”

The state could pay a single mother £1000 per week, and it would still not be enough to ‘incentivise’ a young woman to become pregnant.

Can we just get a bit of perspective. So to claim a paltry cheque a women has to go through the: constraints that pregnancy places on a women’s mobility and lifestyle choices, to push a fridge freezer out of her vagina, and to top it off go through sleepless nights and post-natal depression.

Scroungers? Not necessarily.
Mugs? Now that’s more appropriate.

Sorry Tories, but there’s some painful physical and mental facts about pregnancy, that even the so-called ‘nanny state’ can never stop.

My suspicion would be that the South Sea bubble have been sleep walking in made employment relatively attractive and we have also employed endless bods to go around chivvying at vast expense which cannot hurt.

Only if you have the both skills to obtain that employment and there are suitable jobs available within reasonable daily travelling distance, hence the highest teenage pregnancy rates are found in those areas of the industrial North that were hit hardest by the recessions of the early 80s and 90s, give or take a couple of inner London boroughs.

So the lack of progress isn’t particular staggering once you factor in the fact that the increases in affluence over the last ten year, and indeed the last 40 years, have not been evenly distributed across the UK. The problems are at their worst in areas that have largely missed out on the boom years relative to the rest of the UK.

Welfare isn’t the cause of these problems, but it isn’t a cure either – it’s merely a mean of ameliorating the worst of the symptoms – a palliative measure, if you like.

If you want to look at in economic terms then the problem is that successive governments have bought so heavily into the notion that ‘you can’t buck the market’ that they’ve forgotten the government’s can, and should, exert an influence over the economy which ensures that there’s at least a reasonable distribution of economic opportunities.

The state should neither seek to micromanage the economy and dictate which businesses and industries are located where but nor should it abrogate all responsibility for trying to ensure economic opportunities are spread around a bit by slavishly following the diktats of the market.

Many of the answers lie in governments consciously starting to the play the long game on economy using the levers it has at its dispose that businesses do respond to.

If there’s a desperate need for for employment in a particular area, say the old Lancashire mill towns, then the government should be looking at ways to encourage and support businesses to set up or relocate to those areas by laying an attractive ‘table’ for potential investors using everything from targeted tax breaks to public sector investment in necessary business infrastructure (transport, communications, etc.).

By and large, businesses are more likely to respond to the government pulling fiscal levers than individuals are. What we need is a government, or rather a series of governments that operate much more cleverly in pulling those levers and that, in turn, necessitates a much greater degree of political, administrative and fiscal decentralisation in the public sector.

If a local council, for example, needs to bring more jobs into their area then they should be permitted to cut local business rates in order provide a fiscal incentive to employers, etc. – or maybe central government could take a hand by selectively cutting the headline employer’s NI rate in areas where the higher than average unemployment and a need for a fiscal stimulus to revive the local economy.

If you can create employment that is within the reach of teenagers living in those areas with the highest current conception rates and give them something to aspire to that they can see themselves reaching then you give them viable alternative to life on the dole as a single mum. Couple that with investments in public health education and put in place a high quality, mandatory, sex and relationships curriculum patterned on the Dutch model – which we know for a fact, works – and then you’ll start to make some inroads into this issue.

Unity were you are that teen pregnancies are a worse problem amongst black girls . Does this prove that being black makes you irresponsible ?

Nope, it simply proves that are a range of complex sociological and cultural factors affecting Britain’s black communities that need to be addressed.

Why are the arguments put forward by right-wing people on this issue so unsophisticated and lacking in any understanding of sociological or psychological realities?

Two issues seem to stand out. Firstly Britain has one of the lowest rates of benefits in Western Europe. If it was simply a case of people choosing to have more kids because of generous benefits then we would expect Holland and Germany to have much higher levels. They don’t. In fact quite the opposite. So this should make us sceptical of simplistic arguments regarding a relationship between benefit level and teenage pregnancy rates. Secondly it seems fairly obvious that this issue has a very strong class basis. Teenage pregnancy rates are much higher amongst the very poor than they are amongst the more affluent. They are also concentrated in the areas where which went into severe decline during the 1980s – our old industrial heartland. Now if you have spent any time in these areas living amongst the bottom 20% you soon become aware of a number of things. For a start large number of male workers were thrown on the scrapheap during the period and never found work again. Most after failing to quickly find work and having lost the self-respect and sense of worth which vanished with their previous high-status employment have become incredibly demoralised. Hundreds of thousands of people live like this in places like Glasgow, parked on benefits and forgotten. It is common for them to drink and smoke heavily to have bad diets and suffer high levels of depression. These people will also be bringing up children. Is it terribly surprising that their children having been brought up in such an environment will be more likely to fall pregnant at a early age than a young girl brought up in the home counties with the expectation of going to University?

Unfashionable as it may be to say it but the stubbornly high levels of teenage pregnancy, and to a degree interpersonal violence, in this country are the legacy of a period in which around 20% of the population were thrown to the wolves. I think its fair to ask whether Labour has done enough to rectify this historical tragedy – IMHO its hasn’t but I think it should also be noted that changing intergenerational patterns of inequality and behaviour is pretty tricky and would require far more money that this Government has been prepared to throw at it.

My contribution to the debate over who used bad stats and why that makes them wrong is

Jaffee, S.R., Caspi, A., Moffitt, T.E., Belsky, J., Silva, P.A. (2001)
Why are children born to teen mothers at risk for adverse outcomes in young adulthood? Results from a 20-year longitudinal study.
Development and Psychopathology. 13: 377-397.

Find, read, inwardly digest and then come back with some reasons why society should not be concerned about some teen mothers not because they are benefit scroungers, not because they are dole dependent but because the outcomes for the children tend to be poor. We should be concerned if the numbers of teen mothers are growing. We should celebrate if they are reducing but why waste time arguing over the stats if we can agree that it may not be “a good thing” and we should “do something about it.”

For what it is worth, for me, Unity wins the argument with some evidence based conclusions and a point by point rebuttal / fisking but Stuart Sharpe’s piece was a whale in a barrel target. I also like the suggestion of health education professionals labouring away in the teeth of governmental indifference. It feels right. I just think that this is an area where the government should not be indifferent. Tom Harris chose an anecdotal path on his personal blog but all too quickly the debate has become about benefit dependency when it should be about public policy towards teen pregnancy and whether what we are doing is a) right and b) enough.

I have my own opinions elsewhere.

“That’s the question – what is it that makes this particular group of teenagers different from the groups before and the group that followed them, both of which were much less inclined/likely to fall preganant while still a teenager?

And the answer, at least as far the preceeding cohort is concerned, is HIV/AIDS.”

Utter, utter cobblers. HIV has been around since I was a teenager (the 1980s). Apart from that there’s no evidence at all that sexual behaviour is influenced by societal factors (what you are grandly calling cohort effects) , in case you hadn’t noticed, sex drive is innate.

“Two issues seem to stand out. Firstly Britain has one of the lowest rates of benefits in Western Europe.”

Yet more cobblers, most countries give nothing to unmarried mothers of any age.

Aha …Can I take it then that you are tacitly admitting that by leaving the economic variable out of your equation you were deliberately misrepresenting the position. Sadly I am employed in filthy trade just now but my suspicion is that you time scale is also convenient shall we say in that it misses out the rise “Lone parenthood “ since the 70s . A historical perspective going back to the thirties say would , I would I would guess , further complicate your ‘human gnat’ theory These gnats make no choice but merely waft in the wind of welfare and economics . I do not myself see people in quite such a way .When the subject of real people who make choices in exactly the way you claim never happens , their peers are also unimpressed by the excuse that there are not sufficient jobs . After a long period of full employment and torrential immigration justified by demand such an excuse is weak weak weak . Other people do find jobs . On regional policy you may think the rape of the South to fund Labour’s client regions such as the North East (in which more state vouchers are earned than real money ) can be pushed further . I do not . You may feel that the billions thrown at RDAs has been a stunning success .You are alone.
In the London Boroughs of which you speak as you may well be aware there entire areas where welfare is a way of life ,,. In Islington 70% of the Coucil housed population ( 50% of housing in various forms ) were on welfare (including pensioners admittedly ). Fatherless multigenerational welfare use was ingrained . These people do not attend Sure Start as we dutifully did like good little Soviet Citizens and I am dubious about your unsupported assertion that endless cash thrown at the problem has done any good . Where such things are measurable , crime education and so on the results have been abysmal
……investments in public health education and put in place a high quality, mandatory, sex and relationships curriculum patterned on the Dutch model – which we know for a fact, works – and then you’ll start to make some inroads into this issue……
Really ? You think that young women do not know that if you insert the penis into the vagina and allow semen to ejaculate therein you may become pregnant . Unity I don’t wish to be personal but ave you ever met a teenage girl ? Do you quite seriously think that the girls who become single mothers need a chat about the birds and the bees ? Indeed , have you ever met a teacher , and if you have can you conceive of a less appropriate group to introduce young minds to sexual responsibility. If you can find one sober and not actually in flagrante delicto why not broach the subject .

I do not myself strongly object to sex education , which we already have lots of , for all I know there may be an example of a women who tripped and fell on a erect penis and in all the confusion , forgot to get off it having no notion of what was happening .So go on then have your sacred cow , I would hate to be disrespectful of someone’s faith

Overall though your wish to leave right and worng out of thje equation is to treat people as if they were molecules and as we all know they are not . You are wrong
( and I am right )

Yet more cobblers, most countries give nothing to unmarried mothers of any age.

This isn’t true. Do you really think that the low and nordic countries as well as germany give nothing to unmanrried couples?

What is so ridiculous about all these right-wing arguments about issues like teenage pregnancy or crime is that they rely on a completely untenable ‘rational actor’ model of human behaviour which completely fails to consider the sociological and psychological contexts of behaviour.

I mean look at the States they have the most extraordinarily punative drug control laws. The right-wing ‘rational actor’ model would predict deterrence but levels of drug use and abuse in America are very high which suggests the model is bunk.

sorry that that should be ‘unmarried mothers’

Thanks Unity, this was a winning article and should be read far more widely than it will be. Your measured response to the ideologues who commented showed exemplary restraing. I don’t mean to lower the tone but shame on Newmania’s crude obfustications. You clearly have decided Britain’s society is getting worse will not accept any evidence to the contrary under any circumstances.

Utter, utter cobblers. HIV has been around since I was a teenager (the 1980s). Apart from that there’s no evidence at all that sexual behaviour is influenced by societal factors (what you are grandly calling cohort effects) , in case you hadn’t noticed, sex drive is innate.

FFS, put your thinking head on for a moment…

Between 1986 and 1992, the Conservative government of the time spent £73 million on its AIDS related public education campaign, a significant proportion of which was spent on promoting the use of condoms and its core safe sex message.

In 1985, before the campaign began, there were:

- over 3,000 new diagnoses of HIV infections,
- 50,000 recorded cases of gonorrhoea, and,
-1,500 recorded cases of syphilis.

By 1988, the number of new cases of HIV fell by a third and the number of recorded cases of gonorrhoea fell to 18,000. The incidence of gonorrhoea continued to fall reaching a 20th century low in the mid 1990’s, as did the incidence of syphilis, which bottomed out at about 150 cases per year during the same period.

Between 1990 and 1995, the abortion rate fell, for the only time in the last 40 years, from 15.5 per 1,000 women in 1990 to 14.5 per 1000 women in 1995, which may not seem like much but actually amounts to over 16,000 fewer abortions in 1995 than there were in 1995 once you exclude non-UK residents from the figures.

As already mentioned, the teenage pregnancy rate fell by about 15% for under 18s and 12% for under 20s, also between 1990 and 1995.

The government ended its public education campaign in 1992.

In 1996, the teenage pregnancy rate shot up by 9% for under 18s and about 7% for under 20s in a single year and the abortion rate rose to 16 per 1,000 women.

If we consult the ONS’s full abortion statistics report for 1996, what we find in the age-related stats is that the vast bulk of the fall in the abortion rate between 1990 and 1995 is accounted for by falls in the abortion rate in under 16s and under 20s. There were slight falls in rates for the 20-24 and 25-34 age groups, a few fractions of the percent, and the abortion rate in over 35’s actually rose very slightly.

Although there were increases in the abortion rate across all age groups in 1996, the rate of increase in under 16s and under 20s was three times that of any other age group.

In this, the under 16s group is of particular interest because this is the group that did not start to receive sex education at school until AFTER the end of the government’s AIDS campaign.

During this period, sexual behaviour was very influenced by a societal factor – awareness of the risks presented by HIV – and this influence manifested itself as a massive increase in the regular use of condoms, which is precisely what led to decrease in incidence rates of primary STD, teenage conceptions and abortions.

If you need any further proof, try consulting stock market records and look for movements in the London Rubber Company’s share price, which I think you’ll find would have been a hell of an investment had you got in sometime around 1983-84.

Looks like the death sentence would work as a deterrent then. I wonder in Holland if the prevalence of Public schools freed from the state and usually run by religious groups has had an impact . I wonder if in those schools the teenage pregnancy rate is lower or higher than in equivalent non religious schools
Shall we take a wild stab in the dark ( a form of crime which is fast rising ) and say lower. What do you make of the Dutch system by the way , I think it’s a good idea to break up the state monopoly and it seems to work . Perhaps you would like to join me in congratulating the Conservative Party in looking at successful practice abroad in such new Edens as Holland .

Looks like the death sentence would work as a deterrent then.

But its doesn’t does it? If deterence was the key factor then the US would have a low murder rate when actually its very high.

Any major social phenomena such as teenage pregnancy or crime rates is complicated. To imagine that they primarily the result of sticks and carrots is far too simplistic.

If you have research on the Dutch system you are welcome to present it. However it should also be borne in mind that Dutch society is rather less unequal than ours so that a transplanted educational model may not be as sucessful in producing good outcomes.

I’ve written a new post on this which I hope explains my position, and my background, more thoroughly.

Right – it look’s like I’m going to have spell this out in simple terms…

1. The Welfare State did not create the modern underclass, it merely sustains it at a level at or about the poverty line. It’s a palliative, nothing more.

2. What did create the modern underclass was the structural changes in the UK economy in the early 1980’s, where we lost much of our industrial base and the jobs that previously absorbed the majority of Britain’s low-skilled labour pool and provided them with what was a relatively good standard of living.

3. Getting rid of the welfare state won’t get rid of the underclass or the social problems associated with it, it would merely result in a much poorer underclass and more social problems and social unrest.

That doesn’t mean to say that the present welfare system doesn’t need significant reforms, particularly in terms of how it operates when people are making the transition from welfare to work but if you’re serious about scaling back the welfare state then you’ve got to put something in its place if you’re not to increase level of poverty and, therefore, the social problems that go with it, which means creating jobs but, crucially, creating jobs that are within reach of people with limited skills, both in terms of the skills demands and location, and which pay a decent living wage.

As far as all that goes, my argument is that successive governments, since the 1980s, have shown a spectacular lack of imagination in their approach to job creation and have failed to make the right kinds of investments in business infrastructure that would have helped tackling the problem of the underclass.

To put it crudely, politicians, and New Labour in particular, crawled right up the arse of the financial services industry and ignored the fact that London and the South East have been sucking all the oxygen out of the UK’s regional economies as long as the tax monies kept rolling in, when they could, and should, have been working to spread the wealth around by investing in infrastructure and creating distinct local and regional micro-economies that encouraged business investment in the regions.

You could say that the government have put all our eggs in one basket and now someone’s managed to drop the damn thing, we’re all basically screwed.

That’s the basic story here.

As for the rise in lone parents during the 1970’s, if you check the data you’ll find that almost all that increase stemmed from the rise in the divorce rate after that was liberalised in the early 70s.

As far as teenage pregnancies were concerned, the overall conception rate was fairly stable from the late 60’s to the early 1980s. What actually changed was the single women rapidly began to choose abortion over marriage as a solution to the problem of falling pregnant outside of wedlock, which meant that the marriage rate declined as the abortion rate rose.

It was only in the early 80’s, when the rise in abortion rate started to slow but the marriage rate continued to decline relatively rapidly, that you started to get significant numbers of unmarried teenage lone parents.

If you are brought up in the UK in social housing, the chances of you getting a place of your own at the age of 18 (or 21, 25 etc) are virtually zero. Unless you’re a parent.

Bubbly – It’s characterstic of the left that you assume complicated problems must have complicated solutions. Surely it’s obvious that if you reward people for doing something they will keep doing it, it’s basic tenent of behaviour, it’s why we get paid to work, its why we have laws, etc etc. What exacly is wrong with “simplistic” solutions (other than putting putting a lot of left wing professionals out of a job) ?

Matt Munro

It’s not so much that you are rewarded for doing something, it’s more that you are penalised for abstaining.

If you are brought up in the UK in social housing, the chances of you getting a place of your own at the age of 18 (or 21, 25 etc) are virtually zero. Unless you’re a parent.

Yes, there’s a desperate shortage of social housing…

…which is why, right about now, we should be investing in a large scale house building programme as part of the overall package to boost the economy and steer it towards an early escape from the current recession, especially as the current base rate is a mere 0.5% and the State has pretty much always been able to borrow much more cheaply than the private sector.

When interest rates are this low, social housing is a good investment, not least because the construction industry is one which can still absorb significant amounts of low skilled labour.

The thing to do here is wait until the end of the year, when the labour movement restrictions on the EU A8 accession states that other EU countries adopted expires and economic migration from Eastern Europe will start become more dispersed, and we should be good to go.

Unity – there has always been an underclass, check out a Hogarth engraving or read a Dickens/Orwell novel……………….

Should have mentioned it in your post, it was long enough. Instead you made a spurious link to HIV.

I live and grew up as part of what you call ‘the underclass’. The single most important factor in deciding to have a child in this ‘underclass’, is access to housing. And there’s no shortage of housing either. When I and my peers were between the ages of 18-21, we knew that there was no chance we would ever be allocated a flat, even a small studio/bedsit and yet the estates were half empty and consequently overrun with squatters.

I am believe most of Western Europe has various structures that discourage people from becoming single mothers. Of course, they also have better sex ed. So perhaps its a combo that is needed. Make sure individual incentives push away from state dependence and also tell individuals how to avoid falling into the situation too.

There is a shortage of social housing because of mass immigration policies. If repeated Govt’s had not allowed in so many immigrants, there would be ample social housing for our poorest.

If you think Eastern European workers will suddenly all move to Italy and Spain, etc, you are living in dreamland. They choose the UK primarily because of the universal knowledge of English. Plus, our open labour markets, the existence of established communities and the twisted State bureaucracy that will offer them support at the expense of workless locals. Thousands have already put down roots and are staying. You can guarantee, with the recession in full swing, some EU nations will not give free access to their labour markets next year.

And there’s no shortage of housing either.

That would explain why there’s currently 4.5 million people on the waiting list for council housing, a figure that’s expected to rise to 5 million by the end of this year due to the current recession.

There is a shortage of affordable housing, generally, a situation made worse by the housing boom.

It’s also estimated that around 460,000 social housing properties are currently under-occupied, which means they have 2 or more unused bedrooms.

It not just a question of having more houses, but also of having the right kind of properties to meet the current demands.

There is a shortage of social housing because of mass immigration policies.

Nope, wrong…

The shortage of social housing is a direct result of the policy of denying councils the right to reinvest capital receipts from right to buy sales in new housing stock.

Migration has very little impact on social housing, simply because very few migrants have any right to social housing in the first place.

Oh look, Letters From a Tory has quietl;y run away after an unsucessful attempt at trying to shift goalposts, and still not having any figures to back up all the guff.

That sort of summarises the right-wing approach (and I include Tom Harris in this) doesn’t it?

Its all a bunch of empty platitudes aimed at demonising young mothers without any intelligence or stats.

chavscum: There is a shortage of social housing because of mass immigration policies. If repeated Govt’s had not allowed in so many immigrants, there would be ample social housing for our poorest.

And this is another example of right-wing stupidity. Margaret Hodge said the same didn’t she? And it turned out these people only took about 1% of social housing.

Honestly, why do we get the stupid crop of right-wing tories? I’m sure there are intelligent ones out there. They just don’t come here.

First of all I m ust say that I thought Unity did a pretty good job of summarising the factors behind these phenomena. The only area he didn’t really stress was that the government has increased employment in the North via the expansion of the public sector which I think is a very good thing for which they should get more credit.

It’s characterstic of the left that you assume complicated problems must have complicated solutions. Surely it’s obvious that if you reward people for doing something they will keep doing it, it’s basic tenent of behaviour, it’s why we get paid to work, its why we have laws, etc etc. What exacly is wrong with “simplistic” solutions (other than putting putting a lot of left wing professionals out of a job) ?

Do you really think that human beings are as simpistic as this? Do you not realise that people choose to work because it gives them other benefits such as feelings of purpose, self-esteem and self-worth? And do you really think that it is laws rather than customs, morality, social values which are the primary drivers of human behaviour. Do you really think that the police and legal services could ever be well resourced enough to deter bad behaviour if we were all as atavistic as you imply? Ultimately its informal social controls that keep us behaving well and its in the areas where these have broken down that we have problems.

At the end of the day there are only really 3 real approaches to dealing with the bottom 20% – our underclass.

1- The traditional British solution- park them on benefits.
2- The US solution- lock ‘em up.
3- The Social Democratic solution- aggressively target inequality and intevene strongly in the provision of education, opportunities, parenting skills etc.

Labour has INHO got the balance wrong in the last 12 years- there has been too much 1 & 2 and some but not enough 3.

“the Netherlands provides the best model, eschews crude religious moralising in favour of educating young people”

An interesting thing about Dutch policy is that it does appear to eschew crude religious moralising – sadly that is not the case in many Dutch schools and in many Dutch families – where in my experience, moralising appears to be pretty normal and can be pretty extreme (to our ‘progressive’ ears).

The difficulty with arguments in this area is that there appears to be some correlation between children having children and their children having children – as well as some correlation between what we perhaps euphamistically call ’social ills’ and poverty. I’m deliberately being understated here … before anyone snaps and shouts at me!

These arguments are difficult and no-one side has a monopoloy on the right questions let alone the right answers. In the UK, all politicians from all parties want to see changes to the lives of both the poorest and the most disadvantaged – we disagree about who can assist in making those changes; and it is on this that we should concentrate are aguments.

As with other arguments, we should stop pretending that those we oppose politically either don’t ‘get it’ or that they ‘don’t care’ …

What actually changed was the single women rapidly began to choose abortion over marriage as a solution to the problem of falling pregnant outside of wedlock, which meant that the marriage rate declined as the abortion rate rose.

This is pure invention. Again and again you confuse “and” with “because”. There is not shred of evidence for your suggestion that marriage was previously a poor substitute for an abortion.
On other matters 80 % of UK trade is internal but manufacturing accounts for many many times more exports than services whose importance you have vastly over estimated as per BBC myth. How you can , with a straight face , claim that not enough cash has been flung at regional policy defeats me .
I see I was right about your convenient time scale ignoring the “Just so” story what we see is marriage under attack and a decline in moral standards which you tried to disguise by ignoring the period when the high levels from which we have slightly come down happened. The punitive tax regime has certainly had an effect on marriage but also the cultural attack of the bourgeois Liberal on all and any sustaining institutions .
You talk about the under class as if it were a foreign tribe . It is not static , in studies that cropped up during Harman`s prole quota idiot idea determining factors in outcomes were shown to be about 20% class with IQ the largest. To talk about this dynamic group as if they were frozen in the 80s where conveniently you can blame Thatcher is another myth . The London Underclass whose existence you cannot tie to some misty eyed shipyards are ( figs not to hand ) a changing population clustered around the availability of social housing .
Social housing is the problem not the solution, that is exactly what was the “poverty trap” is so much larger than it should be . In any case as Nicholas Soames and Frank Field have shown with government figures 2,000,000 of the 3,0000,000 new homes now not being built would have been occupied by immigrants yet to arrive so what is the point of that. The over pricing of housing is currently undergoing correction BUT SURELY we know better than to herd people into mortgage commitments they canot sustain …. its caused a bit a prob in spots Unity did you notice ?

Partly we need to learn form the Wisconsin project but also we need to import a belief in self reliance and personal responsibility that the welfare state has eroded as has the sort of Unity-esque reduction of a soul to a mindless economic function

“Its all a bunch of empty platitudes aimed at demonising young mothers without any intelligence or stats.” Yeah. I hate young parents. I want to see them suffer and fail and I don’t want their children to grow up happy or fulfilled or ambitious. Never mind that I’m one of them. Just because I don’t think throwing money and housing at them is the solution, I must have a personal vendetta against them.

Grow up, Sunny. Labour have utterly failed to fix the problem – as it seems even Unity agrees – and the bottom is now falling out, and all you can do is fiddle with statistics and try and insult anyone who disagrees with you.

“Honestly, why do we get the stupid crop of right-wing tories? I’m sure there are intelligent ones out there. They just don’t come here.”

I wonder why.

Honestly, why do we get the stupid crop of right-wing tories? I’m sure there are intelligent ones out there. They just don’t come here.

Sunny allow me to doff my hat , such a delightful soufflé of wit did I never see. “intelligent ones “ , are naturally terrified of these deadly poniards ,from the master of the stylish put down. Bravo!

Unity

Well done, completely failed to address any of my points. Maybe like Sunny you prefer arguing with rabble rousers. There isn’t a shortage of housing, as you concede. What you are talking about is homes owned directly by the local authority.

Why is there millions on the waiting list? Because a social tenant pays less. For example, the rent on my one bed flat is 620 a month. A mate lives two streets down, same borough, almost identical proportions and facilities. Rent 390. I don’t begrudge it, like me he grew up on an estate in the area and managed to wangle a flat of the HA, as his stepdad worked for them. Good luck to him.

So if you were that bothered about all these people on the waiting list, you would propose immediately legislating social terms for all those who need it and expect it (children of social tenants). As it is, you have to demonstrate need and a young person who grows up on a local estate doesn’t qualify.

Unless of course they become a parent.

That would explain why there’s currently 4.5 million people on the waiting list for council housing, a figure that’s expected to rise to 5 million by the end of this year due to the current recession.

..and your theory is that more free houses will reduce the queue ? Does anyone see a flaw in this assumption , anyone ?…anyone ?

According to the Teenage Pregnancy Unit
http://www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/teenagepregnancy/?PageID=85
*75% of pregnancies unplanned; they do not benefit from pre-natal nutritional supplementation.
*Teenage mothers are the most likely of all age groups to smoke during pregnancy.
*Increased risk of pre-term labour
*25% more likely than average to have a low birth weight baby.
*Infant mortality rate for babies is 60% higher than for babies of older mothers.
*Half as likely to breastfeed as older mothers.

*Post-natal depression is three times more common with 40% affected.
*Poor mental health continues for up to 3 years after the birth of the child.
*Research suggests that the most substantial influence on children’s behavioural problems is the mental state of the mother.

*Almost 40% of teenage mothers have no educational qualifications
*Within a year of birth 50% of teenage mothers are no longer with the father.

*Becoming a teenage mother increases the probability that any partner she might have has no post 16 education and is unemployed at age 30.
*Fathers relationship with the child tends to be fragile from the outset and is unlikely to endure.

If we are charitable we can assume that the right-wingers are concerned about the difficulties facing young Mums, rather than the few extra bob it costs them in taxes ?

But as Unity has already highlighted one of the big (unanswered) questions is WHY some children in the UK make such choices so early in their lives.
Is it really because their options are so circumscribed that a damp, two-bedroom flat on the 7th floor of a high rise is seen as some sort of holy grail ?

On the other hand it has been claimed that pressure is being placed on teenagers to abort so that the Govt can reach it’s target (to reduce pregnancies).
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/schoolgirls-pressured-into-abortion-to-meet-teen-birth-target-539782.html

The state has it’s role to play, of course, but will often be a poor substitute compared to responsible parents who give their children enough sex education to deal with the vagaries of teenage relationships – so, maybe education needs to be aimed at a subsection of adults as well as the teenagers themselves ?

Stu, who said anything about young ‘parents’ – your post similarly talks about young teenage girls as the problem as if they’re a disease on society. Let’s quickly fisk your reply

Labour have utterly failed to fix the problem

How would you suggest they ‘fix the problem’? People like yourself want easy and quick solutions, without accepting that some attitudes and situations take decades to rectify. In fact, even on your own blog you admitted you had little clue about the stats nor any solutions. Or any ideas. You just want to rant and rave.

– as it seems even Unity agrees – and the bottom is now falling out

Er no, nowhere has he said or is there any indication ‘the bottom has fallen out’. Is that your usual hyperbole again?

and all you can do is fiddle with statistics and try and insult anyone who disagrees with you.

After being so thoroughly pwned by actual stats, and being showed up for not really knowing before you fly off the handle about a particular problem – I’d be the last person to accuse others of fiddling the statistics. You, like LFaT, once shown to be bullshitting, just simply shift the goalposts in an effort to pretend someone is ‘fiddling’ the statistics.

Why don’t you use some stats or evidence in the first place? I know its difficult, but a bit of evidence might even bolster whatever it is you’re trying to say.

On your blog post you say:
Quite frankly I don’t give a damn how bad John Major’s government was. In this debate it is ancient history, and it serves nobody to go on about it.

But it does matter – because you’re simply echoing the failed right-wing policies and ideas of yesteryear. Soon, you’ll be back in Jon Major territory, and no doubt you’ll blame Labour then for whatever.

I offered no solutions, I gave no alternate plans, and I didn’t intend to say any more on the matter – although I’m delighted to have furthered the debate. If I were to start looking for ideas to solve the problem of teenage pregnancy, however, I would be tempted to begin by looking at the ‘Broken Britain’ report from Iain Duncan Smith.

Oh dear, this sort of sums you up really doesn’t it? You don;t know the stats, you don’t know any solutions and haven’t read any material. IDS parrots John Major and we’ll come full circle again soon, and you’ll simply keep parroting the same old guff without actually asking why these situations occur in the first place.

Hooray, idealogue ToryBots busy trot bashing and arguing from assertion. Yippee, Eltonesque Comedy Socialist stereotypes bashing the auld enemy with stats and Thatcher-geschicte. Lots of heat, not much light. God how I love seeing politics in the raw.

From time to time, like lightning above the clouds, brief moments of illumination.

After reading those helpful stats posted by the a&e charge nurse, I am hoping that whether you are a benefit nuker, a supine enabler or anything in between, you can get behind the proposition that having a baby as a teenage mum right here, right now is not “a good thing.” It also seems that being the baby of a teen mum is unlikely to be a great life either. Chances are, it’s a rubbish experience for both of them.

Some of you want to make it better by helping the teen mums and some want to make it better by reducing the number of teen mums. Some want to reduce by painless interventions like education and some want to reduce by painful interventions like benefit cuts. All of these approaches will probably work to some extent, beyond that its about political choices.

I will go out on a limb here and say that barring a miracle, the next government will be heavily informed by the IDS “Broken Britain” agenda. They are convinced that Britain is broken and that they have to “do something” about it. They are rather more fond of stick than carrot. They have teen mums on their agenda. These are the people who need to be influenced and informed over the next 5+ years because they will (barring above miracle) be writing the laws and setting the policy. Fail to engage them and you are debating in an echo chamber.

How do you convince the Conservatives to keep their hands off the painful interventions? I think you do it by moving the discussion away from the best outcome for the mother and onto the best outcome for the child.

There is not shred of evidence for your suggestion that marriage was previously a poor substitute for an abortion.

Actually, there is…

One of the more interesting sets of maternity related statistics you’ll find on the ONS website is annual data for children born within 8 months of marriage, broken down by the age group of the mother at the time of the birth.

If you look at that data set and cross reference it against the data on abortions you’ll see the former collapse over a space of 15-20 years, at the same time that the abortion rate rises.

In short, the death of the shotgun wedding…

“Migration has very little impact on social housing, simply because very few migrants have any right to social housing in the first place.”

Maybe not in the first instance, but it does not take them long. Silly me, I hadn’t realised that the assortment of Somali, Bangladeshis, West Africans, Albanians that dominate my brother’s estate in West London were now British citizens. I must have imagined the procession of refugees and 3rd World occupants of the previously council owned, now HA run properties in my street. Tell me what is the % of Afro-caribbeans living in social housing? The same % for the biggest population of Somali outside Somalia?

You can delude yourselves with your lies and manipulated statistics, you can convince a lot of people in the short term, but now the effects of mass immigration are plain to see to anyone without left-tinted goggles, Labour will pay for it in the polls.

“If you look at that data set and cross reference it against the data on abortions you’ll see the former collapse over a space of 15-20 years, at the same time that the abortion rate rises.

In short, the death of the shotgun wedding…”

Alternatively, it could simply reflect a change in social mores …

We can interpret statistics in many different ways and the assumptions and interpretations that we make are merely assumptions and interpretations.

but now the effects of mass immigration are plain to see to anyone without left-tinted goggles, Labour will pay for it in the polls.

You mean like the last three times? That ‘Are you thinking what we’re thinking?’ didn’t go so well did it? But then chavscum, I’ve never accused you of having a good handle on reality.

52. a & e charge nurse. The figures explain much of the reasons why social inequality is such a problem. Not many teenage mums, especially as they often have two more children by the time they are 20 are ever going to have a high flying career. Bringing up two children while studying for a degree in engineering or science at Cambridge, Imperial or Oxford and rowing in the university boat team is rather diffficult. Taking up a position in Shell or BP undertaking work in the development of a Siberian oil field is diffcult with two young children – flexi time not much use. Many employres want to see good academic qualifications and achievement in sport or arts as they want well rounded people.

We have a major problem with a massive percentage of poorly unskilled and semi -skilled people in this country. Being a teen age mum greatly increases the difficulty in obtaining the skills required for a well paid job and invariably means the children are brought up in stressful environment. Bringing up children in a stressful environment can impede their development. This is why the children of uneducated unskilled parents are falling behind the children of middle class parents by the age of three. I cannot understand why if people consider the inequality in this country is unacceptable, that uneducated unskilled teenage unmarried mothers is anything other than a catastrophe . As there is free movemment in labour, many employers are happy to employ skilled foreign workers for unskilled and semi skilled positions rather than unskilled and semi-skilled Britons, thus maintaining inequality.

We have had 65 years to address the lack of education and skills of the unskilled working class-how much longer will it take? The problem is that a large proportion of the unskilled working class do not want to change.- you can take a horse to water but you cannot make it drink.

Well seeing as the British right wing (which includes New Labour and their tabloid crazy friends) have been copying the bullshit of the American Christian Taliban for the last 30 years. I.e. Sex education should not be taught in schools, Condoms should not be available, and abortion should be banned or at least made difficult to obtain is it any wonder that there are teenage pregnancies.

The record of abstinence education in America has been very poor despite the millions of $ that have been poured in by the Federal Govt. Pregnancies rising in back wood , red states.

The Right want a return to the sweep it under the carpet hypocrisy of the Victorians.

collapse over a space of 15-20 years, at the same time that the abortion rate rises.

Which 10 to 15 years , was it by any cyhnace over the same period as the introduction of the Pill?

“Stu, who said anything about young ‘parents’” I’m not gender biased. If you hadn’t noticed, men can have children too – they’re called ‘Fathers’. “Your post similarly talks about young teenage girls as the problem as if they’re a disease on society.” No it doesn’t and I take offence at that. It talks about the level of benefits available to young parents as being a powerful incentive for not working. That’s an argument about benefits, not about teenagers. I make no moralising statement about teenage girls whatsoever. Nor did I say that teenage girls were the problem – quite the opposite. Quite simply, what you say is a lie.

“thoroughly pwned by actual stats” SRSLY? “pwned”?! What is this, a “constructive debate” or a l337 hax00r’s conference? I barely mentioned statistics in my original post. I’ve made one throwaway comment on the subject and then retracted it. I’m perfectly happy to accept that some reduction was made to the teenage pregnancy rate – but as I wrote before, returning to the levels of the mid-nineties is clearly not enough, and there’s been almost no change in the stats in the past 5 years, and we should be aiming to at least be moving closer in line with the Eurozone rates. You say that ‘long term solutions’ are needed. Last I heard, James Purnell was talking along similar lines to IDS, about how welfare reform was needed, the current system isn’t working, and we should be looking at the role of families when we’re trying to solve the issues.

Discrediting a single sentence of my post is a pyrrhic victory – you’ve ended up arguing about a percentage point and a throwaway sentence, while ignoring the actual debate on the nature and scope of benefits and welfare. It’s partisan politics at its worst. Whilst other commenters are actually furthering the debate, you’re simply wandering in and taking potshots. You’re not, to use a tired old expression, seeing the wood for the trees.

“You’re simply echoing the failed right-wing policies and ideas of yesteryear.” Not at all. All I have written about is why I think a high teenage pregnancy rate is a problem (I’d be interested to know why you think it isn’t), and why I think the current welfare system removes incentives to succeed. I’ve been open and honest about where those opinions come from, I’ve explained my logic and understanding in detail. Nowhere have I said that we should go ‘Back to Basics’ *, nowhere have I made a ‘moral’ case against teenage pregnancy nor said people should get married before they have children. I said I thought IDS has put forward some interesting ideas, but I was also deliberately guarded in how far I would take them: I said there was merit in “the idea that parents with aspirations will have aspirational children. That the spiral could be made an upward one instead of a downward one”. Would you disagree with that sentiment, or the intentions behind it?

You’re either misreading me, misquoting me or misunderstanding me – although I’m not certain which, nor whether it’s accidental or deliberate. Wouldn’t it be nicer to concentrate on the areas we agree about and build on them, rather than just assuming everyone not on your side of the debate is pure evil and only wants to cause harm?

* And, for the record, I have never voted Tory.

The emphasis on conception in the original article has only managed to muddy the waters still further.

Even the most rabid right-wingers don’t believe that girls get pregnant and then have an abortion in order to jump the housing queue and live on benefits.

Abortion is a health issue, single parents are a social and economic issue and collapsing both into debates around conception just confuses matters.

Unity – there has always been an underclass, check out a Hogarth engraving or read a Dickens/Orwell novel……………….

Uhuh. Things were far worse back then. That’s why you need the state to assist the poor, and can never depend upon charity alone.

That would explain why there’s currently 4.5 million people on the waiting list for council housing, a figure that’s expected to rise to 5 million by the end of this year due to the current recession.

..and your theory is that more free houses will reduce the queue ? Does anyone see a flaw in this assumption , anyone ?…anyone ?

I sure do!

That would explain why there’s currently 4.5 million people on the waiting list for council housing, a figure that’s expected to rise to 5 million by the end of this year due to the current recession.

Yes, so clearly this state of ours is failing in its duty. Glad we’re agreed on the basic premise of what that is, though. ^.^

The problem is mainly that our taxes are too low, because middle class scroungers who largely wouldn’t

..and your theory is that more free houses will reduce the queue ? Does anyone see a flaw in this assumption , anyone ?…anyone ?

I sure do!

Pray elaborate. I confess that I fail to see how more houses would fail to provide more space for those currently waiting.

*The problem is mainly that our taxes are too low, because middle class scroungers who largely wouldn’t be employed at all but for state infrastructure whine horrendously about it and nobody has the balls to tax the mega-rich. If we had a proper system like you see in much of Europe and all of Scandinavia things would be a lot better. As it is they’re defective and need a lot more funding.

Jack Night: I will go out on a limb here and say that barring a miracle, the next government will be heavily informed by the IDS “Broken Britain” agenda. They are convinced that Britain is broken and that they have to “do something” about it. They are rather more fond of stick than carrot. They have teen mums on their agenda. These are the people who need to be influenced and informed over the next 5+ years because they will (barring above miracle) be writing the laws and setting the policy.

Just what I was thinking. IDS in particular seems to me to be sincere in wanting to improve society for the worse off. He’s not quite bright enough to have figured out that conservatism is part of the problem rather than part of the solution, but I think he’s well-meaning enough. What, if anything, can we do to encourage the Tories to take action that is pragmatically effective, as they did for a while with HIV/AIDS?

On the civil liberties side, there’s an effort to engage with potential allies within the Conservative party: is there something similar that can be done to build broad-church support for practical, effective action on problems associated with teenage pregnancy?

“Jack Night: I will go out on a limb here and say that barring a miracle, the next government will be heavily informed by the IDS “Broken Britain” agenda. They are convinced that Britain is broken and that they have to “do something” about it. They are rather more fond of stick than carrot. They have teen mums on their agenda. These are the people who need to be influenced and informed over the next 5+ years because they will (barring above miracle) be writing the laws and setting the policy.

Just what I was thinking. IDS in particular seems to me to be sincere in wanting to improve society for the worse off. He’s not quite bright enough to have figured out that conservatism is part of the problem rather than part of the solution, but I think he’s well-meaning enough. What, if anything, can we do to encourage the Tories to take action that is pragmatically effective, as they did for a while with HIV/AIDS?

On the civil liberties side, there’s an effort to engage with potential allies within the Conservative party: is there something similar that can be done to build broad-church support for practical, effective action on problems associated with teenage pregnancy?”

As someone who is a Conservative candidate, I can say, without fear of contradiction, that if you continue to slag Tories off you won’t get to ‘build’ the consensus that you appear to want to.

Stop assuming that we Conservatives are idiots … stop making assumptions and interpretations from the data that fit your own political perspective … and stop telling us that the problem is all the fault of the ‘forces of Conservatism’ …

Ignore the parts of the right wing that tell you the same thing as you tell it and start engaging with what is actualy being said and written by the Conservatives and the groups that do engage with the issues and think about them and write about them. Talk a look at Breakdown Britain – and actually read the report, rather than the reports about it; and, if you possibly can, ignore the title and read the text … then take a look at BreakThrough Britian and read the text of the reports. You can find these at the Centre for Social Justice website – http://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk.

If you continue to start from the perspective that ‘He’s not quite bright enough to have figured out that conservatism is part of the problem rather than part of the solution’, you won’t even get heard – but if you start from the perspective that we’ve got a problem that we need to find solutions to, and I am prepared to read what others say and take it in, rather than reject it as daft, stupid of the half-baked ideas of someone who hasn’t the intelligence to understand what is really important, then you won’t engage at all!

Real Conservatives are looking at systems operating elsewhere that are making a difference to teenage pregnancy rates – for example, using mentoring schemes that pair up teenage mothers with older mothers from their communities to give them support, advice and so on.

Conservatives are not, contrary to the myths perpetuated on this site, against the availability of condoms. We’re not against sex education for minors. Most Conservatives in the UK that I know are not in favour of moralising for the sake of it and of restricting access to abortion – although, of course, I am aware that there are some in my party and outside it who desparately want us to adopt attitudes that are akin to those approaches of the so-called Christian Right in the US – attitudes that I personally find bizarre and, frankly, laughable.

Congratulations on a quality thought through post. I appreciate your methodology and rational arguments. You have to ask why on earth the education campaigning was switched off in the Major twilight years. The cost:benefit analysis would be overwhelmingly in favour of the education. That spike represents a lot of dogma driven suffering.

And yes its a masterclass in rebuttal.

“That would explain why there’s currently 4.5 million people on the waiting list for council housing, a figure that’s expected to rise to 5 million by the end of this year due to the current recession”

Seeing as Thatcher sold most of the council houses off 25 years ago, the waiting list is going to get very long indeed.

All those Tory private Landlords complaining about people scrounging off the state while at the same time recieving high rents paid by the tax payer to put people up in private housing and bed and breakfasts.

Living off the state, It’s the Tory way. Just as long as it’s for me, and not for thee.

Evan – This thing is dire! I’m only a few pages in and they’ve already rejected off hand the most effective method (heroin prescription), exaggerated just about everything it can while pretending that the division rammed through our society by faith schools simply does not exist!

High points for the “Indebtedness” emphasis and the invention of the word “Dadlessness” was kind of cute, but this is a shiny, slick but fairly low grade set of policy suggestions.

Pray elaborate. I confess that I fail to see how more houses would fail to provide more space for those currently waiting.

Because there is no limit to demand for free goods . There are in fact plenty of homes but they are not at the right price or in the right place , the hosuing shortage is a market issue not primarily a building issue . Of course there would be some effect if you kept on building millions upn millions of houses but on house prices , not the queue..

I suspect that you’re looking at the executive summary of the Breakdown Britain report – which is a summary, rather than a detailed discussion of what led to the summary.

I have no doubt whatsoever that you will disgaree with some, if not much of the analysis, but at least you are reading it, rather than making assumptions about it.

Where you disagree, get in touch, explain why you think they are mistaken and why you think that they’re mistaken.

Executive summaries of think tank’s papers tend to be glib, slick and simplistic – and that goes for all of them, not merely those that I agree with!

repetitive – I’ve had a bottle with the wife this evening! – sorry

E

restricting access to abortion – although, of course, I am aware that there are some in my party and outside it who desparately want us to adopt attitudes that are akin to those approaches of the so-called Christian Right in the US – attitudes that I personally find bizarre and, frankly, laughable.

There are considerable shades of opinion between the Liberal views you seem to have and Sarah Palin though. That the state actually discriminates against marriage and encourages abortion as a means of contraception is not something I approve of . Also it is not “moralising “ to suggest that choices concerning irresponsible conception have a moral dimension which has been forgotten or to question the assumption that teenage parenthood did not involve an individual making a choice rather than an bit iof duct blown whiever way “Policy” directs them.

Newmania, I did write ‘moralising for the sake of it’ … that does not mean that morals have no part to play.

Evan:

I don’t think you can reasonably criticise anybody for forming an opinion based on a 111 page “executive summary”. In my line of work, an executive summary is one page. A 111 page document is a report. If you can’t clearly set out your position in 111 pages, God help you.

To be fair, I was skimming. Although to be unfair, I was reading the stuff which didn’t reference “Compassionate Conservatism” favourably or suggest that Australia is a decent model, rather than the stuff that did, just to give you a decent chance…

Iain,
I agree – and for the criticism, I apologise. However, summaries in these sorts of documents from all parts of the political spectrum tend to be ‘political’ in the sense that they tend to provide the author’s take on the analysis rather than explain the detail of the analysis itself and they tend also to reflect the particular outlooks of the authors.

The result is that it will be easy for people from a different outlook to criticise the summaries in a manner that says – oh well, you’ve ignored this evidence or that evidence, without aknowledging that the evidence may well be referred to in the course of the more detailed report.

What is very interesting about the analysis in the reports by the Commision for Social Justice is that most commentators who have read them think that they are a detailed and careful addition to the discussion – and this includes people who would never think that they could ever agree with a single word that IDS and his Commission would write.

The narrow point that I have been making in this thread is that it appears that some people would prefer to insult than to engage – to belittle rather than explain – and to shout rather than listen. I suspect that we all would like to see improvements – we disagree about how that can come about, but unless we engage, explain and listen probably we will never progress.

ii think more sex education lessons should be provided though out the years of chidren being in secondary school .