London - The British Medical Association and health advisory groups have welcomed ambitious plans unveiled by the government yesterday designed to halve the teenage pregnancy rate by 2010, Rachel Donnelly reports. Among the proposals is that teenage mothers under 18 will no longer qualify for council housing if they cannot live with their parents and will instead be housed in supervised accommodation.
The Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, formally launched the £60 million campaign in Downing Street where he said the government must inform teenagers who felt they had nothing to lose by becoming pregnant that there was a better alternative.
Under the scheme drawn up by Downing Street's Social Exclusion Unit the government intends to adopt a firm but fair approach to teenage pregnancy to encourage young people to face up to the responsibility of parenthood. Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe with about 93,000 teenage girls - 8,000 under 16 - becoming pregnant each year, double the rate in Germany, three times higher than in France and six times higher than the Netherlands.