The number of teenage pregnancies in England and Wales fell by almost 10 per cent in 2010, according to new figures.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show conceptions in under-18s fell to 34,633 in 2010 compared with 38,259 in 2009, a drop of 9.5pc. Pregnancies in under-16s also went down – by 6.8pc to 6,674 in total from 7,158 the previous year.

However a spokesperson for the Department of Health, while welcoming the fall, acknowledged that Britian still had “high rates compared with many other western European countries”.

Julie Bentley, chief executive of the Family Planning Association, said the decline in teen pregnancies was in part due to wider access to contraception.

However Professor David Paton, from Nottingham University Business School, said that the decline in teen pregnancies was not down to greater provision of contraception.

There appeared to be “no correlation at all between changes to contraceptive services for young people and changes in the conception rate,” Dr Paton said.

He added that “the number of contraceptive clinic sessions offered specifically for young people was static in 2010 following increases in previous years”.

“Despite this, the teenage conception rate continued to fall in 2010.”

Dr Paton, who has conducted extensive research on the subject strategies to tackle teenage pregnancies, has previously described the last Labour Government’s approach to tackling teenage pregnancy as “absolutely disastrous”.

He said that the statistics showed that the strategy, which involved making contraception more easily available to teenagers, had not worked, and that the increased availability of contraception was linked to a rise in the level of sexually transmitted infections.

At an Iona Institute lecture in 2010, Dr Paton pointed out that the pregnancy rate among Irish teenagers aged under-16 is only a sixth of England’s rate despite the fact that the long-standing policy in England has been to prescribe contraception to this age group without parental consent.

The ONS figures also showed that half of all teenage pregnancies now end in abortion.

But the pregnancy rate overall increased, as more women in their 30s and 40s are now having babies. The overall conception rate for 2010 was 82.3 per thousand women, up from 80.9 in 2009, a rise of 1.7pc, the BBC reported..

The sharpest rise occurred among women aged 40 and over, rising by 5.2pc to nearly 30,000.

This rate has now more than doubled since 1990. Conception rates also continued to rise among women in their 30s.

Experts say the trends might be driven by the economic recession

In tough financial times, family may be valued more highly and, as parents could be out of work, they may have more time to spend on child rearing.

But others, like women in their early 20s, may delay having a family due to financial concerns caused by the recession.