Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the implications for his policies of the assertion that there is some evidence that emergency hormonal contraception schemes are associated with higher teenage conception rates, in the article, The impact of emergency birth control on teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, by Professor David Paton of the Nottingham University Business School, published in the Journal of Health Economics in March 2011.
No assessment has been made of the publication in question.
In 2013, the under 18 conception rate was 24.3 per 1,000 women aged 15-17, a fall of 12.3% from 2012 and the lowest rate for 40 years. No research has been commissioned into the links between use of contraception and rates of STIs in young people.