Baroness Nargund (Lab)

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Liddle for securing this debate and for his brilliant opening speech. Having written and campaigned on declining birth rates since 2009, I will focus my remarks on the fertility aspect of this challenge. Last year, we had the lowest birth rate since 1977. My noble friend Lord Liddle has highlighted the statistics of a decline in birth rates and the policies tried elsewhere. I want to focus on an easy win. The Department for Education could implement this tomorrow at minimal cost to enable our young people to understand what affects their future fertility and how to protect their natural fertility. I am talking about an issue close to my heart: introducing fertility education into the school curriculum. Today, one in seven couples struggles to conceive. I have seen the emotional, physical and financial toll that this takes, as prospective parents fight for years to realise their dreams of holding their baby. In many cases, if these patients had better knowledge about their own reproductive health, the hardship of IVF and infertility could have been avoided. Within the education system, we need to teach both boys and girls in their late teens to understand the impact of their age and the lifestyle choices they make on their future fertility. In this age of social media, we know that more young men are looking to perfect their image online, but performance-enhancing drugs, including anabolic steroids and non-prescribed testosterone, can severely affect their fertility, not to mention the risks of smoking and excessive alcohol intake. Moreover, young women need to be aware that, if they become underweight, with a restrictive diet and excessive exercise to achieve a certain appearance, their hormonal and bone health could be affected, as could their future fertility. They need to know about their family history of menopause and its impact on their own age of menopause. We are failing to educate young people about their future fertility. I urge my noble friend the Minister to meet me to discuss how to develop fertility education modules in the PSHE curriculum to teach students how to protect their natural fertility and change their lifestyle. I have tried this. I introduced fertility education modules in some London schools, but I have failed to get that into the curriculum. Now is not the time to sit on our hands and argue that demographic shift is our destiny. It is the time for fertility education and for more babies.