The story about 13 year old girls being given contraceptive implants without their parents’ knowledge drew the usual justifications from the usual suspects.

Natika Halil of the Family Planning Association said the provision of contraception to young people was “a vital part of the Government’s strategy to reduce teenage pregnancy rates in the UK which are amongst the highest in Europe”.

There is only one problem with that argument: the British Government’s strategy of making contraception more widely available to teenagers has been a colossal failure.

Since 2000, they have been making contraceptives, as well as the Morning-After-Pill, extremely easy for teens to obtain, but the rate of pregnancy for teenagers under 16 is six times higher in England and Wales than it is here. We do not make contraception available to young teenagers without parental permission so maybe Britain should be copying us, not the other way around.

Professor David Paton of Nottingham University gave a presentation on the issue to The Iona Institute two year ago.

Last year, Dr Paton and his colleague Professor Sourafel Girma published a report saying easier access to the Morning-After-Pill has not reduced the number of teenage pregnancies as it was supposed to do and may be associated with a rise in sexually-transmitted diseases (STIs).

Increased access to contraceptives was the lodestone of the last UK Government’s Teenage Pregnancy Strategy which was introduced in 1999 and aimed to halve teenage pregnancy rates by 2010. .

Since the start of 2000, local authorities in England were encouraged to introduce schemes that offer the Morning-After-Pill free of charge, over the counter at pharmacies to teenagers under the age of 16. 

In 2009, the UK Government announced that one of its plans, the Young People’s Development Programme (YPDP) to reduce teenage pregnancies had failed. 

Teenagers participating in the programme were found to be more likely than their peers to have had sex, according to the Government’s own findings. Sixteen per cent of girls enrolled in the scheme involving more than 2,700 children aged between 13 and 15 fell pregnant, more than twice as many as in a similar ‘comparison’ group of teenagers, where the rate was just six per cent. 

Teens were told how to access contraception and were even given free condoms in some sites.

In 2007, despite the policy, teenage pregnancy rates in England and Wales increased to 41.9 girls per 1,000 aged 15 to 17 from 40.9 in 2006.

More recently there has been a very slight fall, but given the very high teenage pregnancy rates in the UK that is nothing to boast about.

No wonder Dr Paton has described the UK Government’s policy in this area as “absolutely disastrous”. Despite these figures, many here continue to insist that ever more available contraception is the solution to teenagers. If they are not persuaded to rethink their stance by the UK experience, it’s hard to know what would persuade them to think again.