Professor David Paton, chair of industrial economics at Nottingham University Business School told a Westminster health forum seminar on unintended pregnancy and access to contraception that the strategy has failed on a number of fronts. Launched in 1999, the strategy aimed to halve the under-18 conception rate by 2010, and establish a downward trend in the under-16 rate.
Paton, who has worked as a government advisor, said the rate of decline in pregnancy rates has decreased since the strategy was published while sexually transmitted infections (STI) figures have grown.
"The hope was the more money you spend the faster and faster the declines - in fact we have seen the opposite, the declines have decreased," he said.
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