Labour's £300m policy 'disaster' as teen pregnancies rocket to highest level in decade
Pregnancies among girls under the age of 16 have shot up to the highest level in a decade, official figures have shown.
The news dealt a fresh blow to Labour's hopes of cutting rates of teenage motherhood.
It was also revealed that half of pregnancies among girls under 18 now end in abortion.
Young parents: Samantha Humphries, 15, and Daniel Sargent, 16, have twin sons - pregnancy among under-16 girls is at its highest level in a decade
Labour has spent £300million on trying to reduce teenage pregnancy by handing out contraception and expanding sex education.
However, pregnancy rates among under-18s in England are now higher than they were in 1995 - four years before Labour launched its Teenage Pregnancy Strategy and three years before 1998, the year the Government uses as its ' benchmark' for measuring progress.
There are suggestions that Labour chose 1998 because it had an unusually high number of pregnancies following a scare about the contraceptive pill.
In 2007 there were 7,715 conceptions among girls between 13 and 15, who are below the legal age of consent. This was the highest since 1998.
Under-16s now account for one in 100 of all pregnancies. Some 8.3 in every 1,000 girls in this age group became pregnant in 2007 - the highest rate since the benchmark year.
And in the month that has seen national concern over 13-year-old father Alfie Patten, the figures showed pregnancies among under-14s leapt by nearly 29 per cent from 295 in 2006 to 380 in 2007.
Ministers have responded by redoubling their efforts to persuade teenagers to use contraception. They announced £20.5million in new spending, which will take the total spent on the Teenage Pregnancy Strategy since its launch to £306.5million.
'Broken Britain': Baby-faced Alfie Patten, who reportedly became a father at just 13, is demanding a paternity test after two other teenagers claimed they slept with his 15-year-old girlfriend
Among the new schemes is an NHS plan to text young girls to remind them to take the contraceptive pill. To keep the messages secret from parents, NHS clinics have been sending girls code phrases such as 'Call Alex' or 'Walk the dog'.
Children's Minister Beverley Hughes said: 'More teenagers may have been engaging in risky behaviour and not using contraception, resulting in an increase in conceptions leading to abortion.
'Our strategy is to encourage teenagers to delay early sexual activity, but to use contraception when they do become sexually active.'
Tories called on ministers - who are now certain to miss their target of halving English under-18 pregnancy rates by 2010 - to refocus their policies to support families and teach children and teenagers about relationships. Conservative health spokesman Andrew Lansley said: 'This demonstrates once again how pointless it is to set targets if the Government doesn't do what is needed to deliver on them.
'Reducing teenage pregnancy requires more than teaching children about sex.
'It requires a supportive and responsible family, together with high-quality relationship education which gives teenagers the self-confidence and guidance needed to recognise their interest in avoiding early and unprotected sex.'
Independent analysts called the Government's Teenage Pregnancy Strategy a 'disaster'.
Professor David Paton, of Nottingham University Business School, one of the leading experts on the policy, said: 'The disaster is particularly obvious if you look at pregnancy rates among under-16s. They are higher even than in 1999.
'The strategy is failing, but it seems to be failing the youngest and therefore most vulnerable teenagers most of all.'
This failure is reflected in stories such as that of Samantha Humphries, 15, and her 16-year-old boyfriend Daniel Sargent.
Samantha, known as Sammii, recently gave birth to twins Liam and Ryan three months early.
In between visiting their premature babies at the neonatal centre, Samantha and Daniel have been trying to study for their GCSEs.
It was also revealed that 50 per cent of pregnancies among teenagers ended in abortion in 2007, up from 48.4 per cent the year before.
The decision of more than 20,000 teenagers in England and Wales to have an abortion was part of a remorselessly rising pattern that means there are now more than 200,000 terminations each year.
Abortions among teenagers have risen by nearly a third since 1997.
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