Betrayal of a generation

The damning verdict was delivered in a United Nations report.

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Even though Britain is the fourth wealthiest nation in the world, the child welfare agency Unicef found children were far better off and better cared-for in less prosperous countries.

The 20 above us included Hungary, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Greece and Poland. The Netherlands was ranked the best country for children to live in, with Ireland ninth.

The report put Britain above only three countries for educational standards and second last for numbers of single parents and stepfamilies. It was the country where fewest children found others of the same age 'kind and helpful'.

Rates of teenage births were the worst in the developed world. British children were most likely to be drunk from the age of 11 onwards, most likely to have had sex by 15 and highly likely to smoke cannabis. Their diet was also poor - they were third from bottom for eating fruit.

The findings are a scathing attack on Gordon Brown's claim to have lifted hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty and showed starkly how youngsters suffer when they are brought up by single parents or their families break up.

Shadow chancellor George Osborne said last night: 'This report tells the truth about Brown's Britain.

'After ten years of his welfare and education policies, our children have the lowest wellbeing in the developed world.

'The Chancellor has failed this generation of children and will fail the next if he's given a chance. We need a new approach.'

The Government-appointed Children's Commissioner for England, Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, said: 'We must acknowledge that these problems cannot be solved by policy and funding alone.

'There is a crisis at the heart of our society and we must not continue to ignore the impact of our attitudes towards children and young people and the effect this has on their well-being.'

Unicef found that deep poverty remains and alongside it the worst levels of drinking and under-age sex.

Britain was only just above the bottom of the table when ranked for child drug abuse, teenage pregnancy and levels of bullying and violence.

The report challenged Labour's guiding principle that all kinds of families are just as good and that children suffer mainly from poverty and 'bad parenting'.

The Government has stripped the last tax breaks from marriage while bringing in benefits like tax credits which help single parents rather than couples.

Yet Unicef linked single parent families and stepfamilies with poor education, poor health and poor quality jobs.

It said the lack of two birth parents, rather than poverty, was the biggest problem for children with single mothers or from broken families.

Sociologist Patricia Morgan, author of a series of studies of changing family structures and childhood, said: 'The Government has been ignoring evidence about the effect of family fragmentation on children for so long - will it believe it when it comes from the UN?'

'We have tested to destruction the idea that family structure does not matter. Government neglect of two-parent families is criminal.'

Unicef's 'Report Card: An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries' was billed as 'a comprehensive assessment of the lives and well-being of children'.

It concluded that 'economic poverty alone is an inadequate measure of children's overall well-being' and warned that across the developed world 'many of the corrosive social problems affecting the quality of life have their genesis in the changing ecology of childhood.'

Labour came to power pledging to promote 'education, education, education' and slash teen pregnancies and risky behaviour by the young. But Unicef paints a picture of failure on all fronts.

Ministers stayed silent on the agency's findings.

Children's Minister Beverley Hughes - who has taken the lead in promoting initiatives like the childcare-based Sure Start and an education curriculum for babies as young as three months -was not available, her spokesman said.

Only junior Work and Pensions Minister Jim Murphy was said to be preparing to appear on radio and TV broadcasts.

A spokesman for his department, which runs much of the benefit system, said: 'We recognise that Unicef does vital work in this area.

'But in many cases the data used is several years old and does not reflect more recent improvements in the UK, such as the continuing fall in the teenage pregnancy rate or in the proportion of children living in workless households.'

Latest Government teen pregnancy figures, however, show that falls in the rate are slight and its targets will not be achieved.

Robert Whelan of the Civitas think-tank said: 'I have seen the evidence piling up for 20 years that married families are better for children than single parents or stepfamilies. It has become impossible to ignore.

'The question is how long the Government can close its eyes to the reality.'