Leading Article: A girl's clear right to confidentiality

HERE IS a paradox. Since 1885, it has been illegal in Britain to have sex before the age of 16. Yet doctors can prescribe the Pill to girls who will be breaking the law if they use it for contraception; and since 1985, doctors have also been forbidden, except in certain narrowly defined circumstances, to tell parents without their daughters' consent that they have done so.

However strange this may seem in terms of the law, there are good practical reasons for such a state of affairs. It may a bad idea for girls under 16 to have sex; but having a child must surely be worse. Withholding the Pill from them will prompt some under-age lovers to buy condoms from chemists or machines; others will merely continue to have sex without taking precautions against pregnancy.

Yet, despite the confidentiality of contraception upheld by the Law Lords' ruling on the Victoria Gillick case in 1985, the rate of under-16 pregnancy rose every year in the 1980s. Almost one in 100 British girls under 16 - two, on average, for every secondary school in the land - gives birth to a child. This is the highest rate in western Europe. This may be because under-age lovers still do not believe they can receive contraceptive advice without their parents' knowledge. In a recent survey, three-quarters of the girls under 16 polled believed that doctors would tell their parents if they asked for the Pill. For their part, many family doctors are still uncertain as to what the law says. A few do not even know that they can prescribe a pill that will terminate a pregnancy up to 72 hours after conception.

The guidelines put out yesterday by the medical establishment will help to make the legal position clear. They tell doctors that only in very rare cases will they be allowed to breach young girls' confidentiality; and if they do, they must tell them before doing so - and be prepared to be hauled before the General Medical Council to account for their actions. The result should be to make doctors' behaviour more consistent.

Yet it is not enough to remind doctors of their obligations to the law of the land and to the Hippocratic oath. Their patients also need to know. The same leaflet, preferably rewritten in plain English, should now be given out in schools.