Termination of Pregnancy (Information Provided)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 10:33 pm on 2 November 2010.

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Photo of Anne Milton Anne Milton The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health 10:33, 2 November 2010

Yes. I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point. The issues raised by conflicts of interest and hiding behind commercial sensitivity give rise to considerable concern. That is why I am pleased to be meeting some of the service providers in the next week or so to discuss those issues. It must be pointed out, with the greatest respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire, that although the stories she talked about involved bad practice, there are a lot of instances of very good practice. We should not miss that in the discussion about where things are not going as well as they should be.

Contraception has been free for everyone and is readily available in the community from GPs, family planning clinics and abortion providers, but there are clearly barriers. Why are so many young women and men not using it? A number of factors can lead to risk-taking behaviour, such as sexual violence, alcohol, lack of contraception awareness and self-esteem. We need to use simple, effective messages about safe sex, sexually transmitted infections, condom use and contraception. We need to ensure that young people receive high quality education on relationships and sex and we need to tackle those issues in a holistic and effective way. We need to ensure that young people are equipped to make the choices and the sometimes challenging decisions that they face in their lives. Those decisions are increasingly challenging in this day and age.