“Having kicked this lively debate off and read your contributions, may I summarise.
Although the legal age of consent is 16, a lot of younger kids do have sex. Nothing will stop this but the kids must be compulsorily fully educated on the subject i.e. not only birth control and sexually transmitted diseases but also the emotional, psycholigical and social responsibility aspects.
Unfortunately we do have an underclass who bring children into the world without the financial or intellectual capabilities of looking after their development ; and are encouraged to do so by the current benefits system.
Therefore society can not rely on parents to give the right guidance although many do. Children must therefore be given a much broader sex education in schools on a compulsory basis so that they can make informed and balanced judgements for themselves.
By all means have these 'sites' for children to obtain further advice including where to obtain condoms : but there is still an issue that giving out free condoms will encourage youngsters to think that casual sex is fine (even though there's a law against it) or to feel the odd one out if they are not getting their fair share.
Over and out - thanks for all your comments.”

“Leeroy - actually i think the numpty comments on this thread weren't too bad - i was expecting much more flawed justification for making access to sex education and contraceptives as difficult as possible.
But however - you are right - Holland has acheived amazing results with their approaches to sex education as well as drug misuse and a myriad of other social problems. But then they don't have the retarded attitude the Brits have to admitting theres a problem.”

“I have to say condoms aren't as safe as you may think - my friend was wearing one and he still got hit by a bus .....”

“The Evening Herald commentards always make me dispair at the low IQ and mentallity of the general populace.

How can this be a bad thing?

Education is the key, one only has to look at the model employed in the netherlands to see that education WORKS.

I'm sure I don't need to remind anyone that they have the lowest teen pregnancy rate in Europe and the age of consent there is efectively 12!

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article5208865.ece

http://www.unicef.org/pon96/inbirth.htm”

“Martinet (gender unknown) -how can you possibly reason that Oggy's views on (self) discipline are responsible for the high underage pregnancy rates and that his daughter is unlikely to have a 'balanced, wholesome,happy life.'
Don't knock marriage - statistics show that children from stable marriages are more likely to develop into balanced individuals themselves than others less fortunate.
Statistics also show that people who have been serially promiscuous are less likely to form stable relationships later on - so being encouraged to be sexually active at 13 is not very sensible in a civilised society. Unfortunately with a growing underclass and over liberal thinking the aims seem to be sex with as many partners as possible, broken relationships and kids who don't know where they came from and have no aims in life other than to be disruptive.
I am obviously not opposed to sex outside of marriage but I do believe that 13 year olds should be told the age of consent and made fully aware of all the problems involved before being given condoms.”

“they keep saying under age sex is against the law, but its goes on, i say have the condoms but if you end up pregant then baby gets taken away from you”

“if you cant be good be carefull, if you cant be carefull...buy a pram!”

“Since when was discipline barbaric?”

“People with ideas and flawed logic like oggy must carry most of the responsibility for the high underage pregnancy figures. telling people that marriage is the panacea are deluding the kids, trying to enforce barbaric discipline is ignoring reality and human emotions.I fear his daughter will have a lot of late learning to do and that the prospects of her being likely to lead a balanced happy wholesome life may be much reduced.”

“Just because it's illiegal doesn't mean it doesn't happen,
And to assume that a pair of 13 year old kids are not going to hump because it's illiegal is the most idiotic thing i've heard this week! (and i watched Prime Ministers Questions),
and no matter how naive people wish to remain about it, it will continue to happen, I think this is a sensible idea, at least now the kids will have no excuse for getting pregnant so young.

Pretending that a problem doesn't exist and doing nothing about it only makes the problem worse,
clearly there are some stuck up people and ignorant Catholic die-hards who would rather that nothing was done, that the whole situation was swept under the carpet and ignored. But thankfully someone has taken the initiative to ignore those stuck up few and actually done something positive to try and lower the rate of the problem.”