Tories in fresh statistics trouble
Monday, 15 February 2010 12:00 AM
By politics.co.uk staff
The Tories have found themselves using flawed statistics just ten days after getting their fingers burned on crime figures.
A document called Labour's Two Nations, published yesterday, claimed 54% of girls under 18 in the most deprived areas of Britain are likely to fall pregnant, compared to 19% in the least deprived areas.
The writers appear to have misplaced a decimal point and thereby multiplied the statistic by ten.
Labour quickly seized on the document, showing that the rate of conception in the most deprived areas is in fact 5.4%.
"They are so out of touch with family life in Britain that they believe over half of teenage girls in the poorest areas fall pregnant," children's secretary Ed Balls said.
Nick Clegg's chief of staff, 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."
In the same deprived areas, there had been a 10.5% decline in under-18 pregnancies since 1998, Labour argued.
The mistake could not come at a worse time for the Conservatives, with shadow home secretary Chris Grayling recently receiving an embarrassing rebuke from the head of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir Michael Scholar.
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