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UK is accused of failing children

Unicef says the study is the first of its kind for child well-being

The UK has been accused of failing its children, as it comes bottom of a league table for child well-being across 21 industrial countries.

The Unicef report looked at 40 indicators including poverty, peer and family relationships and health.

The Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Finland head the list.

Children's charities have condemned the findings. The government says it has made progress on child well-being through several initiatives.

Unicef - the United Nations' children's organisation - says the report, titled Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-being in Rich Countries, is the first study of childhood across the world's industrialised nations.

Unicef UK executive director David Bull said all the countries had weaknesses that needed to be addressed.

The UK was in the bottom third for five out of the six categories. It was placed in the middle third of the table for health and safety.

A spokesman for the UK government said its initiatives in areas such as poverty, pregnancy rates, teenage smoking, drinking and risky sexual behaviour had helped improve children's welfare.

"It looks at some information and analysis from perhaps six, seven, eight years ago," he told the BBC's Newsnight. "Some of the information really is out of date in that sense.

"If you look at the teenage pregnancies issue, for example, we're now 20 years low on teenage pregnancy levels, and on homelessness as well there's been real progress there as well - a 25-year low in terms of new homelessness, so there's an awful lot we have achieved."

The Children's Society has launched a website to coincide with the report, www.mylife.uk.com, which allows children to answer a series of surveys about their lives.

"Unicef's report is a wake-up call to the fact that, despite being a rich country, the UK is failing children and young people in a number of crucial ways."