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Being a teenage mum 'saved me', says Labour's shadow education secretary

Angela Rayner - AFP
Angela Rayner - AFP

The shadow education secretary has said that having a baby when she was 16-years-old "saved” her life.

 Angela Rayner, who left school without any qualifications when she was pregnant, said that she was written off as a "scumbug" at the time.

Speaking at Labour Party conference she said: "Even though getting pregnant at 16 and having no qualifications is not the best start for anybody, you've got to understand that where my life was, it actually saved me from where I potentially could have been.

"Because I had a little person that I had to look after and I wanted to prove to everybody that I wasn't the scumbag that they thought I was going to be, and I could be a good mum, and that somebody was finally going to love me as much as I deserved to be loved."

Profile | Angela Rayner
Profile | Angela Rayner

She recalled growing up in poverty in Stockport, going to school without any breakfast and asking friends if she could have tea at their house.

Her parents didn't get up to send her and her siblings to school and there were no books in the house. Her mother was one of 12 children and cannot read or write.

She said: "We'd go to school me and my brother and sister and we'd be really hungry, genuinely, and I was looking at the clock waiting to get to lunchtime."

"We didn't have books when we were young. That was how it was for me."

Ms Rayner said Labour has a social mobility plan that includes "cradle to grave" education with more help for the under fives and investment in further education.

Britain’s teenage pregnancy rates have been in steady decline over the last decade and are currently at the lowest level on record.

In 2015 there were 20,351 conceptions to women aged under 18 in England and Wales - a 45 per decrease on the number in 2009, the final year of the Labour Government.