UK medical expert calls for age of consent for sex to be reduced to 15, govt says no

LONDON: One of Britain's top medical experts has called for the age of consent for sex to be lowered to 15 in UK - a proposal that Downing Street promptly rejected.

John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Health has called for the age of consent for sex to be reduced to 15 after recent official figures showed that up to a third of teenagers have sex before the present age of consent of 16.

But the spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron said, "We reject the call to lower the age of consent. The current age is in place to protect children and there are no plans to change it".

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said he was not in favor of lowering the age of consent from 16 to 15.

He said, "The age of consent has been in British law for generations in order to protect children. Health experts are right in saying there's a problem - we have far too high levels of teenage pregnancy. Do I simply think that a blanket reduction in the age of consent is the answer to this difficult dilemma? No."

Ashton said, "Because we are so confused about this and we have kept the age of consent at 16, the 15-year-olds don't have clear routes to getting some support. My own view is there is an argument for reducing it to 15 but you cannot do it without the public supporting the idea. I would not personally argue for 14 but I think we should seriously be looking at 15 so that we can draw a line in the sand and really, as a society, actively discourage sexual involvement under 15."

He said that countries that have a more open attitude towards teenage sexuality and in fact some of the countries that have lower ages of consent see young people get involved in sex later and they also have much lower teenage pregnancy rates.

Ashton said, "It's time the adults started talking about the situation to take these enormous pressures off children and young people from becoming sexually active too early. Countries with a lower age of consent, young people got involved in sex at a later age and teenage pregnancy rates were lower. The problem we have in this country is we still have this fantasy about young people and we live in a world of wish-fulfillment."

"At the moment youngsters are getting the most incredible messages from pornography, from social media. What we are seeing is more physical abuse and mental abuse in relationships. Pornography was causing young people to have strange expectations of their relationships and this needed to be corrected by open discussion in a sensible environment," he added.