We aren’t having enough babies, in case you haven’t heard. Britain's birth rate is dropping year on year, now languishing at 1.4, recent ONS figures show - the lowest since records began - and the consequences are alarming.
For a population to remain stable, there must be a birth rate of 2.1 children per woman, a figure not seen since the 1970s. The golden age of the required replacement rate is nothing but a fabled tale to tell our grandchildren, if we have any that is.
With the UK’s current fertility rate, our population will decrease by 25 per cent over a generation without immigration. One hundred young adults today will produce approximately 71 children in the next generation, and in turn, those 71 adults will produce around 50 children in the following generation.
What’s the problem? Many will argue that a smaller population means less pressure on housing, infrastructure and services, and it will also lessen our destructive impact on the planet.
But fewer babies today means an unbalanced society tomorrow, with an ageing population leading to the likes of the NHS and social care collapsing in on itself. Eventually, the UK will have a large elderly childless population who are dependent on the state.
Research published in The Lancet warns that “tumbling” fertility rates will leave Britain increasingly reliant on immigration to sustain economic growth and public services. In the long run, it argues, “open immigration will become necessary”, potentially bringing “staggering social change”.
For years, the falling fertility rate has been treated as a quiet statistical curiosity. Now it has entered the political arena with a bang.
Reform UK has sparked outrage in recent weeks with fertility comments. First, the candidate for the Gorton and Denton byelection, Matt Goodwinn called for young girls to be given a “biological reality” check, then Danny Kruger said his Party has a “pronatalist ambition”…and so came the outcry of a ‘Handmaid's Tale’ future and ‘Misogyny’.
But could Reform be on to something?
In an interview with Politics Home, Mr Kruger, the East Wiltshire MP, vowed that Reform would bring in policies to increase the birth rate, saying: ‘‘We want people to have more children, and we think the government should get behind that wish.”
Could Britain’s baby bust become the next political battleground? Reform is banking on it - Sophia Wenzler | Getty Images
Meanwhile, the party’s head of policy, Dr Orr, has previously advocated for a pro-natalist public strategy, saying that the “gap between desired fertility and actual fertility was getting wider and wider in most parts of the West”.
And he’s right, by the way. British women’s desired family size is around 2.3 children, but the actual rate is just 1.41, meaning for every three children wanted, only two are born.
Current projections from the ONS show that women who reach thirty without starting a family have roughly a fifty per cent chance of ever having children.
This is not about shaming or blaming; it’s a very real warning to those women who do dream of children and a family one day, not to put it off for misguided reasons.
So the outrage over Reform UK’s comments is misplaced. Is the real tragedy not that people are missing out on the children and family they may have so wanted?
Telling young women the ‘biological reality’ of their own bodies is not misogynistic, and advocating for policies which support men and women to start a family if they want to is not radical.
And while we’re at it, what is Labour’s answer? Well, when questioned about falling birth rates last year, Sir Keir Starmer insisted that it is “not [his] place to tell people how to live their lives” and laughingly joked about not having “a birth plan.”
Meanwhile, a Labour party spokesperson said: “Reform’s team of men repeatedly telling women how they should lead their lives should be concerning to everyone…you’d be forgiven for thinking this is something out of The Handmaid’s Tale.”
It’s not just a problem for Britain; fertility rates are dropping all across the globe, bar sub-Saharan Africa. It is clearly not an isolated issue, and the reason behind it remains elusive. The decline appears to stem from a mix of economic pressures, social change and shifting personal priorities.
Whether fertility policy becomes a defining political issue remains to be seen. Reform UK has chosen to confront it directly, however tactlessly.
But surely half the battle in solving the problem is recognising that it exists in the first place, something Labour still seems unwilling to do.
The baby question may make Westminster uncomfortable. Yet as the population ages and the fiscal pressures mount, it is one the country can no longer afford to avoid.
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