TEENAGE pregnancies have soared above the national average under a government-backed project giving schoolchildren easier access to contraception.

Girls aged between 13 and 15 in the Lothians, where free morning-after pills and condoms are given to schoolchildren, are 14% more likely to get pregnant than their counterparts elsewhere in Scotland.

The region is a test ground for the Healthy Respect project, which was launched three years ago with £3m backing from the Scottish executive. Before the scheme was introduced, pregnancy rates among 13-15-year-old girls were only 3% above the national average.

Critics have condemned the initiative, intended to reduce unwanted pregnancies, as an expensive failure, claiming it has encouraged young people to have more sexual partners and take increased risks.

The official figures will put Malcolm Chisholm, the health minister, under renewed pressure to ignore the findings of the executive’s recent sexual health strategy, which called for greater access to contraception for young Scots. The Healthy Respect initiative is due to expand across Scotland.

The statistics emerged after an expert last week blamed the greater availability of free contraceptives in England for a rise in sexually transmitted infections among young people.

Scottish ministers launched Healthy Respect in 2000 in response to growing concerns over one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the world.

A recent United Nations survey found that only America has more pregnant teenagers.

Under the scheme, schools in the Lothians have given out condoms and referred pupils to clinics for the morning-after pill without their parents’ knowledge. Children receive a card from their GP on their 14th birthday containing advice about sexual health.

The executive had hoped that giving frank advice to schoolchildren about sex and relationships, backed up with easier access to contraceptives, would encourage sexually active young Scots to have safe sex.

But the latest executive figures show that the early teen pregnancy rate in the Lothians, almost identical to the Scottish average in 2000, is now considerably higher at 8.4 per 1,000 children, compared with 7.4 per 1,000 across Scotland.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the head of the Catholic church in Scotland, said the Healthy Respect model had failed. He urged that it should not be expanded. O’Brien, who is also the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, described executive plans to make it easier for young people to get contraception as “an especially glaring flaw”.

“This approach has failed to tackle the rise in sexually transmitted infections, unwanted conceptions and abortion levels. Its value-free style should certainly not be used elsewhere in Scotland,” he said.

David Davidson, the Scottish Conservatives’ health spokesman, said: “The state is giving the impression to children that they don’t have to worry if they are sexually active because it will bail them out. The state has got this completely the wrong way around.”

The latest statistics reveal that a total of 112 girls aged between 13 and 15 were pregnant in 2002. This is an 11% rise on the previous year and the highest level since 1998. Across Scotland the number fell by 6% from 735 in 2001 to 694 the following year.

Last night the executive, which has set a target of reducing teenage pregnancies by 20% by 2009, defended the Healthy Respect initiative. A spokeswoman said: “Healthy Respect is a long-term project which aims to change attitudes and behaviour.

“We don’t expect to see results overnight. The project was set up in November 2000 and these figures are for 2002. It is unrealistic to expect results so quickly.”

Last week Professor David Paton, an economist at Nottingham University Business School, told a Royal Economic Society conference that a dramatic rise in sexually transmitted diseases among teenagers was being fuelled by government efforts aimed at reducing unwanted pregnancies. He said infection rates in England had risen by 30% among 16-19- year-olds since the launch of the government’s £63m teenage pregnancy strategy five years ago.

The largest increases took place in areas where most had been done to promote family-planning services, adding to evidence that the government’s approach to young people’s sexual health seems to have encouraged them to take more risks.

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