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Mrs. Spelman: In view of the shortness of time, I ought to continue so that I leave enough time for the Minister.
We have discussed the weaknesses of sex education, but we are still left with large numbers of women who, after the health visitor's final visit, are left alone with the baby, isolated and afraid. Surely they still have parents. Members of the family should be encouraged to take more responsibility for young women in that situation.
The Minister for Public Health (Ms Tessa Jowell):
We have had an extremely good debate and I join those who have paid tribute to the hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) for initiating it. It gives us grounds for a fair degree of optimism and hope in respect of the extent to which the report of the social exclusion unit, with its intensely sensible and practical recommendations, has been broadly welcomed and the fact that the debate represents the progress that has been made from the rather pathetic hand wringing about moral decay that characterised so much of the debate about teenage pregnancy in the past.
My hon. Friends the Members for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) and for Corby (Mr. Hope) set out clearly why we need to be concerned about teenage pregnancy rates in Britain. I would add only two points. First, 30 years ago the rate of teenage pregnancy in Britain was more or less in line with those in other European countries. However, while in other European countries the rates of teenage pregnancy have fallen, that is not the case here. Even parts of the country with the lowest rates of teenage pregnancy have a worse record than other European countries that we should aspire at least to match.
It is also clear that teenage pregnancy is far more prevalent among the poorest. That is why it is central to our range of strategies to tackle social exclusion. A young girl in social class 5 is 10 times more likely to become pregnant when she is little more than a child herself than a girl in social class 1. The other risk factors that reinforce the likelihood of teenage pregnancy include having been in care, having been excluded from school, having mental health problems and having experienced sexual abuse.
Teenagers who become parents, and their children, face additional health risks. The babies have a greater incidence of low birth weight and perinatal death and the mothers have a greatly increased risk of post-natal depression.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth (Mr. Healey) made clear, there are three broad reasons for our current position. The first is ignorance. All too often, children learn about the mechanics of sex from school, but precious little else. That must change. Throughout the consultation on the report, young people said time and again that they did not want to learn only about the physical aspects of sex; they wanted to talk about feelings and know more about how to handle relationships and the emotional aspects of sex. They also need to know about the cost--the extent to which unprotected sex leads to pregnancy and, increasingly, to sexually transmitted diseases.
We have to listen to young people. Had we done so 10, 15 or 20 years ago, many of the issues that we are addressing today would not include an unacceptable rate of teenage pregnancy and the social exclusion associated with it.
The costs of ignorance are great. One reason for the high rate of teenage pregnancy is that Britain has the lowest contraceptive use of any of our neighbouring European countries. The rates of sexually transmitted infection among teenagers are rising fast.
Three in four teenage pregnancies are unplanned. That is why we shall build on the work with Sexwise and NHS Direct to provide a nationally available advice line for teenagers to give advice and counselling and to signpost them quickly to other services that can provide help. We will also be funding a national publicity campaign that will address directly the issues, questions and concerns that young people have. It will also get the messages across to parents.
We have to make it clear that advice and help is available. One of the clear deterrents to young people in respect of seeking advice about contraception is that some 60 per cent. of them are not aware that confidential advice is available.
The second reason for the problem is low expectation. The great challenge to our programme of action is to provide reasons for young girls not to become pregnant--to convince them that life holds more for them than having a baby at 14, 15 or 16.
A number of hon. Members have referred to the third reason--mixed messages. We live in a society where children are bombarded with images of sex, which is used to sell them everything from ice-cream to videos. The message is clear: being sexually active is the norm--come and join the club. Yet the rest of adult society gives a quite different message about sex. Either we do not discuss it at all or--as the report graphically testifies--we discuss it in an embarrassed and diffident way. We hope that if we do not talk to teenagers about sex it will not happen, but we have to accept that all the evidence is stacked against that view.
No young person got pregnant from knowing about sex. Equipping our young people with information about sex, relationships, access to contraception and the risks of sexually transmitted disease is the best way to put them in charge of the decisions that they are often forced into making. We have to be realistic. As hon. Members have said, we have to see the world as it is, not as we might want it to be.
The plan for action is clear. It begins with a new blueprint for sex and relationships education for young people in and out of school. It addresses the fact that such
education needs to start in primary schools and must be set in context. Sex and relationships education must include negotiating relationships, knowing how to say no, equipping children with information about puberty and how babies are conceived and born, recognising that something like 10 per cent. of girls start their periods while they are still at primary school. It sees parents as the first and principal teachers, who must be better equipped to talk to their children about sex. In secondary school, it ensures that advice about access to contraception is properly available.
The risks of unprotected sex are high. Only about 50 per cent. of teenagers use contraception the first time that they have sex. We are taking forward work on that. The sexual health strategy will play a critical role in reducing teenage pregnancy and improving understanding about teenage sexual health.
Improving access to emergency contraception is important, but young people need not be exposed to the risks that they would face if at the age of 13 or 14 they were able to use emergency contraception as an alternative to proper protection, advice and support.
I end on a word of caution. It is all too easy to stigmatise teenage parents, to point the finger and blame them for the ills of society. I finish with the words of one young woman who contributed to the consultation--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst):
Order. We must now move on to the next debate.
Ms Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent, North):
I am grateful for the opportunity to raise issues of real importance to my constituency, and particularly to the city of Stoke-on-Trent and to north Staffordshire. I am pleased that the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Mr. Meale), is here to address what are important issues to the people whom we represent.
I welcome what the Government are doing to tackle economic decline in those parts of our industrial heartlands where manufacturing industry has taken a hammering. I am aware that there are difficulties, but initiatives are taking place. There is a huge commitment across the local community to make a difference. We must make sure that we have joined-up thinking across Government, and that must come from the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, which must work with other Departments and agencies to get the changes that we need.
In this respect, I congratulate the Government--particularly the Deputy Prime Minister--on the report "Making the Difference--A New Start for England's Coalfield Communities". I represent an area that was once the north Staffordshire coalfield and which has never properly recovered from the job losses in the coal industry. Traditionally, our area has relied on pits, the pottery and ceramic industry and--to a slightly lesser extent--the textile industry.
The report on coalfield regeneration is thorough, and I welcome it. It has resulted in extra funding, which will be vital. I am slightly disappointed that no one from north Staffordshire will be represented on the trust that has been set up to administer some of the funding. However, I want the Minister to be sure that we have claims on the trust. Also, we want to work closely with it so that all the recommendations in the report can be brought to bear to make a real difference to our area. I know that the Minister understands these arguments as he, too, represents an area that once depended on coal.
I could refer at length to figures and statistics which demonstrate that if ever an area needed extra help, it is ours. That is the case whether we are talking about exclusion from schools, teenage pregnancies or the numbers of people who, because of industrial injury, are out of work. However, I do not wish to quote the figures. I want to get across a positive message from Stoke-on-Trent and north Staffordshire. We are upbeat about what we can do to meet the needs. All we want is a little extra support, recognition and understanding from the Government, so that we can all work together in one big partnership.
I wish to concentrate initially on round 5--the final bid for single regeneration budget funding, which was made by Advantage West Midlands on 30 April. I would not expect my hon. Friend the Minister to give an answer today on this most important proposal, but I am mindful that, in the next few days and weeks, he and his colleagues will be considering the bid. I want to make sure that he is aware of its merits and of the enormous difference that it could make.
The bid talks about partnership, and it has an impressive list of partners, including the north Staffordshire chamber of trade. At virtually every meeting
that I and local Members have attended with the chamber of trade, the one thing that has been emphasised is that if we are to do something about all the needs of our area, we must start with education. All the partners that have signed up to the proposal--including the health authority, the voluntary sector, industry and the local churches--agree with our Prime Minister: education is the best economic policy that we have. That is why the SRB bid is so committed to education. We are asking for an opportunity to promote regeneration through education--that is the message that I want to convey today.
There can be no more important way of tackling the problems than education and training. If we do not start to put right the previous Government's legacy of underfunding education--not only in Stoke-on-Trent, but in Staffordshire as a whole--we will not realise the potential of the young people in our area.
It is for that reason that I believe that the bid is vital and timely. We want to work with a partnership of universities, colleges, schools, the voluntary sector, local training and enterprise councils, the careers service, health authorities, the private sector, the probation service and unions in the common cause of tackling our educational problems.
Stoke-on-Trent, in common with many older industrial areas, has had a culture in which--perhaps wrongly--education and training were not considered important. Young people have had low educational and vocational aspirations, but much has been done to combat that. We have had the "aiming high" initiative, which has been introduced in close collaboration with many local schools in our area. Through that initiative, we have now understood that the root cause of some of the problems of low business formation and the little capacity that there has been for community-led regeneration goes back to under-investment in education.
It is for that reason that the partnership is committed to increasing staying-on rates in schools, and to bringing the level of 16-year-olds staying on in school to nearer the national level. I congratulate the Government on the educational maintenance awards, which I am determined will make a real difference to our staying-on rate.
The partnership is committed to reducing unemployment by improving access to training and the relevant skill levels for young people, and to improving the participation by young people in the life of the community--for example, by youth parliaments and forums. I was privileged to attend a national award in the House last week involving the Citizenship Foundation, which is keen to work with us in north Staffordshire. The partnership is committed to increasing the numbers of new businesses established by young people.
We have large numbers of young school-leavers who are not settled and are at risk. We want to change attitudes towards education and learning. We want to increase youth participation and decision-making, and we want to deal with underachievers and make sure that the regeneration that the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions is doing so much to bring about is based on and rooted in education.
I must refer to the excellence in cities scheme. The Minister may wonder why I am concentrating on education in a debate to be answered by an Environment
Minister. However, he will understand that we must put in place new mechanisms across all Departments. In view of the role that the SRB bid is giving to education, perhaps we need to look at how Departments can work together. We may need a longer time frame for some of the regeneration policies, and we should consider whether the greater prominence for education in the SRB is helpful. If it is to bring about changes locally, we need to ensure that we have expertise in that subject within the regional development agencies. My hon. Friend's Department has a key role to play in bringing together all the players at a national level to achieve that.
I wish to draw my hon. Friend the Minister's attention to difficulties that could be paralleled at ministerial level if we do not address the issues. For example, we must ensure that my hon. Friend the Minister for School Standards, who has responsibility for inner-city education schemes, has some input into the work of the RDAs and the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. We are trying to get many initiatives, such as sure start, started in Stoke-on-Trent and north Staffordshire. We do not want those schemes watered down, but we do want clear cohesion to obtain the maximum benefit.
It is important that the Minister understand the support across north Staffordshire for the bid for objective 2 eligibility, because we want north Staffordshire to feature in that. I pay tribute to Mike Tappin, former Member of the European Parliament, for doing so much preliminary work. It is a great loss to us that he is no longer an MEP and I wish to put on record my thanks for the work that he has done.
I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to take account of our support for assisted area status, although I know that other Departments are involved. When the urban task force report is released, and if it contains a challenge for city centre regeneration pilots, I request that adequate time and funding be allowed for all cities to take part.
I am aware of the tremendous work that my hon. Friend the Minister has done in respect of British waterwaysand canals, which offer enormous opportunities for regeneration. In Stoke-on-Trent and north Staffordshire, we have the Trent and Mersey canal and the Caldon canal, which provide those opportunities. We should like those issues to feature centrally in further funding that we shall request from the Government. We want the Minister to know how much we want to form partnerships with him to work on that issue.
We also have enormous opportunities for regeneration through heritage. I do not know whether the Minister has visited the most monumental site in my constituency--the former Chatterley Whitfield colliery--which was used by English Heritage on 8 June to launch the national buildings at risk register. Chatterley Whitfield is the nation's No. 1 most at risk building. It offers prospects for job creation and sustainable urban regeneration, so that what was once a powerhouse of the past can become a powerhouse of the future to benefit Stoke-on-Trent and the wider north Staffordshire area.
I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, Moorlands (Charlotte Atkins), who is in her place, is fully aware of the opportunities for our constituencies that such regeneration would provide. We need a commitment from the Government, Advantage West Midlands and the regional development agency to
work closely with English Heritage, in view of the priority that it has given to getting Chatterley Whitfield working again--with new jobs--for the benefit of local people whose lives have been blighted by the closure of the colliery.
No debate on regeneration in Stoke-on-Trent would be complete without a reference to the pottery and ceramic industry. As I walk through the House of Commons, I am always mindful of the tiles and tableware we use which were manufactured in my constituency and neighbouring ones. The industry is experiencing problems at the moment, like most manufacturing industry, but we are grateful for the SRB money that has already helped to revitalise some of our industry.
12.30 pm
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