Tory Teen Pregnancy Blunder

The Conservatives have been blasted by their political opponents for wrongly stating half of girls from disadvantaged areas become teenage mothers before the age of 18.

A document published by the Tories yesterday suggested 54% of girls in the 10 most deprived regions end up pregnant, while in fact it is a mere 5.4%.

The damning report was designed by the Tories to highlight Labour's "two nations" - the wealthy and the impoverished.

Branding the Conservatives' figures "dodgy", Children's Secretary Ed Balls said the correct figure of 5.4% represented a fall from 6% in 1998.

However, Tories maintained the misplacing of the decimal point made "no difference" to the basis of their argument - that Labour had let down the most vulnerable.

Labour Deputy Leader Harriet Harman said she is surprised alarm bells did not ring for the authors of the 20-page dossier.

"You would have thought that someone [in the Conservative Party] would have thought 'Surely there's something wrong about this'.

"They are so out of touch. Someone junior made a mistake and no-one picked it up."

Criticising the Tories' stance on 'Broken Britain', Lib Dem Danny Alexander said: "The Tories seem to think that half our teenagers are pregnant, our cities are like The Wire and that people will get married for a few extra quid.

"If they really believe Britain is like this, it's remarkable that Conservative MPs can pluck up the courage to leave their houses.

"They should lower their drawbridges, spend less time tending their moats and duck houses, and join the rest of us in the real world."

A Tory spokesman defended the blunder.

"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."

(PR/BMcc)