This country is facing a baby-bust, the Tories have warned. CHRIS TITLEY investigates.

IT was as patriotic a rallying cry as you are likely to hear. "Ladies and gentleman, our nation is facing a grave crisis. So I entreat you: go back to your bedrooms and breed for Britain!"

Okay, I am paraphrasing. But that was the gist. David Willetts, the shadow work and pensions secretary, urged his fellow Brits to lie back and think of England's future.

In perhaps the most racy speech ever delivered to the Centre For Economic Reform (not a difficult record to break, admittedly) Mr Willetts laid Europe's population crisis bare.

Fertility is failing across the country, it seems. Women are choosing to have babies later, said Mr Willetts, and the result has been a plunge in the birth rate.

At the same time life expectancy has improved dramatically. The two figures add up to a potential economic timebomb.

The European Union average birth rate is now only 1.5 per woman, which is well below the replacement rate of 2.1. Britain lags behind at 1.6.

This will mean our already ageing population is set to get older and older. There will be too few workers to pay for the burgeoning pension and health costs of the future.

Even in countries with traditionally high birth rates the trend is the same. The birth rate in Italy is 1.23, and in Spain it is 1.15; only Ireland is still keeping in touch at 1.9.

This means the working-age population across Europe could drop by as many as 40 million by 2050.

The problem is the same at a more local scale. A report on the future of York prepared by consultants URBED as part of the Without Walls initiative this year said the city's ageing demographic could pose real problems.

This estimated that the number of children under 16 nationally will fall by nearly ten per cent in less than 20 years.

More alarmingly, in York the number of under-fives will fall by 13 per cent in the same period.

York will need more and more houses to cope with an increasing, yet more fragmented population. Longer life expectancy, more single parent families, a reduced birth rate and more divorces will put yet more pressure on the city's property stock.

Mr Willetts is delighted we are generally living to a ripe old age; no politician is going to win votes by saying he hopes voters start to drop dead earlier.

But he added: "The problem is the workforce is shrinking and that means we all need to have more babies."

We expect our politicians to practice what they preach, of course, so we carried out a little research.

How fertile is the Shadow Cabinet?

We might anticipate a Tory baby boom. This is the party of family values after all. And the sex scandals that dogged the last Conservative government suggested the party's MPs were more than capable in the carnal department.

Mr and Mrs Willetts have certainly made a contribution to easing our population problem: they have one son and one daughter.

His leader Iain Duncan Smith has done even better, with two of each; he is one of three Shadow Cabinet members with a quartet, the others being the environment, food and rural affairs spokesman David Lidington (four sons) and the shadow chief secretary to the treasury Howard Flight (one son, three daughters).

According to my tot up, the Shadow Cabinet have 49 children between them, excluding two stepchildren, with 27 daughters and 22 sons.

That gives them an average of 1.81 children each, better than the national figure, but not up there at the replacement rate.

The average is brought down by the five Shadow Cabinet members without children including, interestingly, two of the three women: party chairman Theresa May and Shadow Scottish secretary Jacqui Lait.

Ryedale MP John Greenway, by the way, is holding North Yorkshire's own with pride. He has two sons and a daughter.

It seems the Tory Party and British couples everywhere have to up their production rate.

Otherwise who knows what sort of pickle we could find ourselves in. Britain may even have to relax the immigration laws to encourage foreign workers to fill the employment gaps.

Now there is an idea even less likely to be suggested by the Tories than more sex.

Updated: 10:14 Thursday, September 25, 2003