New 'sex please, we're British' attitude shown

"The decade of living dangerously" would make a good subtitle for the latest survey published this morning of British sexual behaviour. While more people reported using condoms, they also admitted to high-risk sexual practices including having two sexual relationships going at the same time, and unprotected sex.

The latest UK National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal 2000) appears this morning in the medical journal Lancet. It involved a detailed survey of more than 11,000 men and women aged 16 to 44 across all parts of the UK, and follows a similar survey conducted in 1990.

The survey indicates that the old adage, "No sex please, we're British" clearly has given way to "Yes please, and whatever you're having yourself". The majority of men and women admitted to having had more than one sexual partner, and a third of men and almost 20 per cent of women reported having had at least 10 partners.

And young people are not abstaining. In the 16-to-19-year category, 30 per cent of men and 26 per cent of women said they had heterosexual intercourse when aged between 13 and 15, with about a quarter of the women acknowledging use of the birth control pill to prevent pregnancy. The average age for first-time sex across all age groups was 17 for men and women. The survey also revealed risky behaviours that could lead to sexually transmitted diseases.

"We estimated that 14.6 per cent of men and 9 per cent of women had concurrent partnerships, i.e., sexual partnerships which were ongoing simultaneously at some time in the past year," the authors write.

And of those who admitted to having several partners over the past year, 15.4 per cent of men and 10.1 per cent of women didn't use condoms regularly to keep disease in check. Almost one in 20 men reported having paid for sex during the previous five years.

There is a price to pay for all this activity, say the authors, and younger sexually active people in particular are at risk.

"We have found that there are considerably higher rates of new partner acquisition among those younger than 25 years and those not cohabiting or married. These strong age effects are reflected in the substantially higher incidence of STIs [sexually transmitted infections] in those younger than 25 years, compared with older people observed nationally."

The authors go on to say the increased tendency to sleep around "may have served to discount some of the public health advantages of increased condom use". The figures speak for themselves: new cases of STIs rose during the decade by 20 per cent for men and 56 per cent for women.