In a sign that government can work, rates of teenage pregnancy in the UK have halved in the past two decades and are now at their lowest levels since record-keeping began in the late 1960s. The dramatic turnaround is the result of an unusually long-term and ambitious strategy launched by the Labour government in 1999. High-quality relationships and sex education were introduced, with welcoming health services—in the right place, open at the right time—and friendly nonjudgmental staff to help young people delay having sex until they were ready, at which point they knew how to use contraception effectively.
