UK: Tory Party under fire for teen pregnancy statistics error

Pregnancy advice groups and child welfare organisations have criticised the Conservatives over their mistaken assertion that more than half of all girls in deprived areas fall pregnant before the age of 18. 

The claim — ten times the true number — is made repeatedly in a campaigning document entitled Labour’s Two Nations, released alongside a new poster campaign launched by David Cameron today that criticises Labour for failing the poor, reports The Times (London).

The proportion of young girls who become pregnant in the UK’s ten poorest areas is in fact 5.4 per cent.

Ann Furedi, chief executive of BPAS, said:

‘The very fact that people can repeatedly get the facts on teenage pregnancy so wrong — ten times wrong — shows that their stereotyped expectations of young people are totally out of sync with reality.’

Britain has one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Europe, with more than 41 girls in every 1,000 aged 15 to 17 falling pregnant each year.

The Two Nations document claims: ‘In the most deprived areas, 54 per cent are likely to fall pregnant before the age of 18, compared to just 19 per cent in the least deprived areas.’

The claim was based on statistics for the ten most deprived areas of the UK — Birmingham, Easington, Hackney, Islington, Knowsley, Liverpool, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Newham and Tower Hamlets. The claim was made three times in the document, The Times reports.

The latter figure of a 19 per cent pregnancy rate in the least deprived areas is also wrong. In the London borough of Richmond upon Thames, one of Britain’s least deprived areas, the true rate of teenage pregnancy is 1.6 per cent, or 15.7 per 1,000, while in rural Rutland it is 1.8 per cent or 18.1 per 1,000.

George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, was unrepentant about the error, claiming that the overall point was clear. ‘The whole document is making the argument that the whole gap between rich and poor in this country is growing after 13 years of Labour government,’ Mr Osborne told Sky News.

A Conservative Party spokesman agreed, saying: ‘A decimal point was left out in a calculation. It makes no difference at all to the conclusions of a wide-ranging report which shows that Labour have consistently let down the poorest in Britain.’

But Harriet Harman, the Leader of the Commons, said that a series of errors showed that the Conservatives were misleading the public.

‘They are determined always to put out a black view of Britain, to put Britain down, and because of that they just can’t be trusted with the statistics,’ she said. ‘This comes hard on the heels of them being told off by the UK Statistics Authority for saying that violent crime was going up when in fact it was going down.’

Tories under attack over teen pregnancy blunder. The Times (London), 15 February 2010