Charities and Opposition MPs turned on the Government today after a Unicef report showed Britain to be the worst place in the industrialised world to grow up.

The UK director of Save the Children described the findings, which showed British children smoking, getting pregnant and distrusting their friends as "shameful", while the Children's Commissioner said the study illustrated a "a crisis at the heart of our society".

The authors of the Unicef paper, Report Card 7: an Overview of Child Wellbeing in Rich Countries, measured more than 40 indicators of children's health and happiness and described Britain as a “picture of neglect”.

The UK finished in the bottom third of 21 industrialised countries in five out of six categories — material well-being; health and safety; educational well-being; relationships; behaviour and risks; and subjective well-being — ending up overall last, after the United States. The Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Finland topped the standings.

The Conservatives accused the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, of failing a generation of children, although the report's author, Professor Jonathan Bradshaw of the University of York, said the result was a consequence of two decades of chronic underfunding in child health and education from 1979 to 1999.

“This report tells the truth about Brown’s Britain," said George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor. “After 10 years of his welfare and education policies, our children today have the lowest well-being in the developed world. The Chancellor has failed this generation of children and will fail the next if he’s given a chance. We need a new approach.”

The Department of Education and Skills (Dfes) countered the report by saying that Unicef had used data that was several years old and did not reflect recent improvements in the welfare of British children, including the falling child poverty and teenage pregnancy rates.

“Nobody can dispute that improving children’s well-being is a real priority for this Government," said a spokeswoman.

“There are now 700,000 fewer children living in relative poverty than in 1998-99, and we have halved the number of children living in absolute poverty," she said, adding that teenage pregnancy rates have fallen by 11 per cent since 1998 and were at their lowest levels for 20 years.

But that did not stop a series of condemnations from academics and children's welfare groups, who highlighted dispiriting findings including the high proportion of 15-year-olds who aspire only to low-skilled work (35.3 per cent) and relatively small number of children who describe their peers as "kind and helpful": just 43.3 per cent.

"We are not the poorest country in this league table, we are, in fact, the fifth richest," said Professor Bradshaw. "And yet we consistently come a long way behind the average... It's a pretty bleak picture."

The lack of correlation between the UK's overall wealth and the prospects for its children prompted the Children's Commissioner, Professor Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, to say that society should look for the underlying causes of unhappiness and insecurity in the young.

“There is a crisis at the heart of our society and we must not continue to ignore the impact of our attitudes towards children and young people and the effect that this has on their well-being,” he said.

Bob Reitemeier, chief executive of The Children’s Society, rejected the Government's claim that the information was outdated, saying the figures, which were mainly taken from 2001 to 2003 were typical for a large comparative study of this kind.

"Unicef’s report is a wake-up call to the fact that, despite being a rich country, the UK is failing children and young people in a number of crucial ways," he said, describing what he called a worrying "poverty of aspiration" among Britain's young people.

Kate Green, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, said the report should spur further progress on the fight against poverty among the young, in which, despite improvements, the Government is not expected to meet its target of halving child poverty by 2010.

Colette Marshall, UK Director of Save the Children, said the Government need to invest £4.5 billion to meet its own child poverty targets.

"It is shameful to see the UK languishing at the bottom of this table," she said. "This report shows clearly that despite the UK's wealth, we are failing to give children the best possible start in life. The UK Government is not investing enough in the well-being of children, especially to combat poverty and deprivation."

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