...BUT IT DOES GIVE WORKERS AN ALTERNATIVE TO NHS IVF LOTTERY

PROFESSOR Adam Balen is correct that when firms offer IVF and egg-freezing as benefits, it could be perceived as encouraging women to delay having a family.

It might indeed tempt some women to concentrate on their careers during their most fertile years and then cash in this apparent insurance policy once they’ve ‘made it’.

Despite that, however, I fully support any company which offers IVF and egg-freezing as an employee perk.

Sadly, too many women remain childless because NHS funding of fertility treatment is a postcode lottery: hit and miss at best, woefully inadequate at worst. Privately funding IVF can run into tens of thousands of pounds, which is unaffordable to many, so if women can instead access treatment via an employer that gives them more choice, which has to be a good thing.

Armed with the full facts – how their fertility changes as they age and how far treatment can help as they do so – women are perfectly capable of making up their own minds.

But we need to do much more to make society, including workplaces, more family friendly, starting with better education on fertility and a shift in working culture that helps rather than hinders women to have children.