Fertility Treatment Regulation

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate. That was very moving, and I am very pleased that her three children are in this world thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Winston. That is amazing. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, I confess my inner Mary Whitehouse is hovering at the moment too, so I agree with her. I am going to slightly change the topic, because we cannot talk about fertility policy without talking about prevention. I have personal family experience of IVF, although not for myself. It is a wild west—it is horrible. The chequebook was extremely strained. The result was great but, my God, that was difficult. And all I see in young people I know is that this problem is getting worse.

I buy into the argument that women want children later, women work, and then there is the cost of living—but there is something else going on, and that something is plastics. They are not just a waste problem; they are a chemical problem. The public treats plastic as litter, but plastics are a very complex chemical exposure. They migrate from packaging, consumer goods and medical products into us through what we wear, through the dust, through our skin. There are 16,000 different chemicals in everyday plastics, and right now we only know about 6,000 of them. Reproductive development is particularly sensitive to hormone disruption, which is caused by chemicals. Fertility, as we know, is governed by hormones; they tell organs when to grow, when to develop and when to reproduce. If these messages are disturbed during pregnancy, infancy or puberty, the consequences can last for decades. This is why endocrine-disrupting chemicals deserve particular attention in a fertility debate.

Declining sperm quality is not just a private medical concern; it may be an early warning signal. Relevant research of 185 studies found a 52% decline in sperm concentration and a 59% decline in total sperm count among a completely cross group of men from North Africa, Europe, Australia and New Zealand between 1973 and 2011. This was updated in 2023, and the same sort of decline was found: a 51% decline in sperm concentration and a 62% decline in the total sperm count between 1973 and 2018, with the evidence that this is accelerated.

Phthalates are a priority, because their impact on reproductive evidence is particularly strong. They are used to make plastic fibres; they are present in products that touch food, bodies and babies, and they are the clearest evidence of reproductive concern. Many studies—and I can supply any noble Lord with huge research details; it has been very difficult trying to chop this down to seven minutes—have shown that prenatal phthalate exposure at environmental levels is associated with altered male reproductive development, particularly if measured through the anogenital distance. For people undergoing fertility treatment, chemical exposure is not an abstract issue. It is not just men who are affected. In a Singapore preconception cohort, higher PFAS exposures were associated with decreased fertility in women. Another 2024 report from the Endocrine Society summarises evidence that phthalates are linked with reduced egg quality and other aspects of egg viability.

Fertility does not end with conception. A fertility policy that ignores miscarriage, preterm birth, placental health and early development is incomplete. The first 1,000 days from conception to age two is the period when plastic-associated chemicals will do their most harm. One global estimate says that 1.97 million preterm births in 2018 were due to phthalate exposure. In tiny babies and tiny bodies, a tiny amount makes a big difference. It might not make a big difference to me or you, but it makes a difference to that foetus. We are not talking here about an industrial accident: this is every day in our kitchens and supermarkets. We cannot expect women and men to understand what chemicals are in saucepans and milk bottles. For instance, all 20 brands of baby bottles and 13 brands of sippy cups tested released BPA and BPS under test conditions. Polypropylene infant feeding bottles release microplastics at levels of up to 16.2 million particles per litre. Ironically and very sadly, sterilisation and high temperatures actually increase the way that plastic chemicals are released into whatever product is around it. The saddest point is if you give your baby those tiny yoghurt pots, that food has had more exposure to plastic than if you bought a large family-sized pot.

We cannot regulate one chemical at a time. It is not a case of saying, “This chemical is no good; replace it with another one”. The Government should now move from reassurance to regulation of the whole lot. The average person cannot inspect the chemistry of a can lining, so the rules have to be set upstream. The European Chemicals Agency is considering a broad restriction of all these chemicals, moving entirely beyond a substance-by-substance individual plan. Will the Government commit to a government review of plastic-associated chemicals and reproductive health as part of any wider review of fertility treatment and regulation, develop a UK plan on endocrine-disrupting chemicals, fertility and pregnancy, including all the related chemicals, and strengthen UK REACH restrictions? If we are serious about fertility, we cannot only fund the treatment after the harm has happened. This is rising and it is real. Chemicals are made by fossil fuel industries; at the moment 25% of fossil fuels goes into plastics. This number is rising while fossil fuels going into industrial combustion engines is falling.

I leave you with one small anecdote. I went to see the lovely NHS doctor here the other day because I have had a tick and I did not know if I needed antibiotics. I was chatting to him and I said, “What do you do when you are not here?” He said, “I run a men’s clinic”. I said, “What do you do in your men’s clinic”? He said, “It’s for men from 18 to 32. It is very strange; all they want is HRT”. I said, “What?” He said, “Yes, they want testosterone”. That is because their bodies are lacking testosterone and, if you do not have testosterone, your sperm are not as mobile or healthy, and your sex drive is not as good. He said they were depressed, but they perked up after that. We have a problem that is ours to fix and ours not to continue.