More very dodgy Tory stats as they say 54% of under 18s likely to fall pregnant in most deprived areas

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

A new Tory document, released tonight and with a Foreword by David Cameron, is billed as “a comprehensive assessment of the level of inequality under this Labour government”. It’s another attempt to paint Britain as “broken”.

Unfortunately for the Tories, it’s anything but comprehensive.

The document says that in the ten most deprived areas in the country, as based on this DCSF report, “54% are likely to fall pregnant before the age of 18.”

In fact, for the ten areas concerned the rate of conceptions amongst teenagers is an average of 54.32 per 1,000 female population, aged between 15 and 17.

That’s 5.4%, not 54%, and in the areas concerned there has been a 10.4% fall in the rate of teenage pregnancies since 1998.

Evidently, the “comprenhsive” report has put the decimal point in the wrong place, which hardly fills you with confidence. What’s more embarrassing than that is that no one at CCHQ noticed the mistake — that no one thought, “hang on, 54% can’t be right”.

That leaves them open to more attacks — as the Spectator says — that they are totally out of touch with the reality of how the country lives.