The United Kingdom on Wednesday rejected charges it is failing children after the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) ranked the country as the worst among 21 rich countries for children’s well-being.
A government spokesperson said much of the data used by Unicef was outdated and failed to reflect recent successes in Britain, such as cutting teenage pregnancy rates to 20-year lows.
The Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Finland topped the standings in the Unicef report into which were the best countries for children in the world’s 21 industrialised powers. The United States was 20 and Britain 21 on the list.
Britain and the US were in the bottom third of the rankings for five of the six dimensions reviewed, namely children’s material well-being; health and safety; educational well-being; relationships; behaviour and risks; and their own subjective assessment of well-being.
But said a British government spokesperson: “We recognise that Unicef does vital work in this area.
“But in many cases the data used is several years old and does not reflect more recent improvements in the UK, such as the continuing fall in the teenage pregnancy rate or in the proportion of children living in workless households.”
The opposition Conservative party accused Chancellor Gordon Brown, who is expected to succeed Tony Blair as prime minister this year, of “failing” a generation of children.
“This report tells the truth about Brown’s Britain,” said finance spokesperson George Osborne. “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,” he added.
The government hit back at the charges. “Nobody can dispute that improving children’s well-being is a real priority for this government,” said the spokesperson.
“We are working hard to improve all children’s life chances and the report confirms that children’s educational attainment at 15 in the UK compares well with many other EU countries.
“Great progress has been made but we know there is more to do to make sure that every child has the best start in life and has an equal opportunity to fulfil their potential,” the spokesperson said.
Bob Reitemeier, chief executive of The Children’s Society, disagreed with government claims that the information was outdated, saying figures taken from 2001 to 2003 were usual for a study of this kind.
“I think what it shows is the trend, the direction of travel we are witnessing across 21 countries …” he told BBC radio. “So it’s putting the UK in a comparative analysis and it’s a very worrying result.”
Reitemeier called the report a wake-up call. “Despite being a rich country, the UK is failing children and young people in a number of crucial ways,” he said.
Professor Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, Children’s Commissioner for England, said Unicef’s findings were disheartening but not surprising.
“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.
“I hope this report will prompt us all to look beyond the statistics and to the underlying causes of our failure to nurture happy and healthy children in the UK,” he said. — AFP