The Government has been accused of failing a generation after figures showed the incidence of pregnancy among girls below 16, the age of consent, at its highest in a decade.

The increase comes despite a ten-year strategy to halve the teenage conception rate, with more than £280 million spent on contraception services and sex education.

There were 42,918 conceptions among under-18s in 2007, up from 41,800 in 2006. The teenage pregnancy rate rose to 41.9 per 1,000, from 40.9 the year before.

The rate among under-16s increased to 8.3 per 1,000 from 7.8 in 2006, its highest since 1998. There were 8,196 pregnancies among underage girls. Girls under 16 now account for one in 100 of all pregnancies. Pregnancies among under-14s increased to 380 in 2007, from 295 in 2006.

Ministers called the increase “disappointing” and admitted privately that it made it almost impossible to meet their target of reducing the teenage pregnancy rate to half the 1998 figure of 46.6 per 1,000 by 2010.

They announced an extra £20 million to promote contraception, and long-acting methods such as injections or implants in particular. Another scheme will see girls sent text messages by the health service to remind them to use contraceptives.

But critics said there was no point in pouring more money into a strategy that was not working.

Norman Wells, director of the Family Education Trust, said the Government was making things worse.

“The Government’s teenage pregnancy strategy has been a disaster,” he said. “The expansion of confidential contraceptive services for young people under 16 is making it more difficult for girls to resist the advances of boyfriends and is giving the green light for boys to pressurise girls into sexual activity. What young people really need is not more talk about the mechanics of sex and contraception, but encouragement to develop the character qualities of stability, faithfulness and commitment.”

Hilary Pannack, of the sex education charity Straight Talking, said: “We are failing a whole generation of young people. Teenage parents statistically are much more likely to become parents of children who themselves become teenage parents. That means generations of child poverty, which we need desperately to tackle.”

A spokesman for the YWCA, which runs programmes for young mothers, said more needed to be done to tackle the causes of the problem, which means Britain has the highest incidence of teenage pregnancies in Western Europe.

“It needs to be better recognised and understood that young women who see little hope for their future are most likely to view early motherhood as a positive change,” he said. The figures, which show the first increase in five years, come weeks after the outcry over Alfie Patten, the boy said to have fathered a child at the age of 12.

Ministers pointed out that the proportion of pregnant teenagers having abortions had increased slightly, to around half, so the number of teenage mothers was not rising.

Beverley Hughes, the Minister for Children, defended the ten-year strategy. She said: “Where progress has slowed, efforts must be redoubled and we will be focusing our challenge on those areas with high and increasing rates. There is no doubt rates have come down where local areas have implemented the strategy properly.

“We have already announced our intention to make sex and relationship education (SRE) compulsory and we will be providing new SRE guidance to schools this September. This is in addition to more support for parents to help them talk more openly to their children about sex and relationships.”

Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, said: “Reducing teenage pregnancy requires more than teaching children about sex. It requires a supportive and responsible family together with high-quality relationship education which gives teenagers the self-confidence and guidance needed to recognise their interest in avoiding early and unprotected intercourse.”

However, some areas have achieved notable successes. Less than a decade ago the London borough of Hackney, which has high levels of deprivation,had one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in the country. Today it has one of the lowest since the creation of a Teenage Pregnancy Partnership in 2000. Sex education in its schools begins at 5 and teenage parents go into secondary schools to discuss sex and responsibility.

Times Recommends

• Should Knox’s trial even have reached the courtroom?
• All that glitters is not sold in Wright’s world
• Believe it or not, Big Brother is your friend