Letter: No attack on childless couples
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Your support makes all the difference.From Mr Julian Brazier
Sir: Your article "The right-wing plot to get Lord Mackay" (2 November) contained the allegation that I had "proposed a tax on childless couples" in a Bow Group pamphlet.
This statement is untrue. I never proposed any such tax although, when my pamphlet was published, the Independent carried a story asserting it at the time. Apparently the journalist who wrote it had not seen any of the advance copies which I had sent to your paper and based the story on a mistake on the tapes. (There was no reference to childless couples in the pamphlet.)
As it is a matter of public record that my wife and I have had infertility treatment (declared as an interest in the embryology debate the year before the pamphlet was published), I would find it even more offensive than most people to victimise childless couples in this way.
I am, incidentally, an (unpaid) parliamentary adviser to the principal group that represents infertile couples in this country, (NIAC).
Yours faithfully,
Julian Brazier
MP for Canterbury (Con)
House of Commons
London, SW1
8 November
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