Single women who want to become mothers will be given IVF as part of a raft of measures to prevent an economic timebomb caused by Scotland’s ageing population. The child’s right to a father and the natural ties are disregarded.

The government’s new strategic plan ‘A Scotland for the Future’ states: “At the moment, NHS assisted conception services are offered to heterosexual and same sex couples who meet certain criteria.

“Increasing access to NHS treatment for the purposes of increasing population could be achieved by widening access criteria to NHS fertility treatment, for example to include single people, or couples who already have a child, or by increasing the number of cycles of IVF to increase success rates.

“Further modelling would need to be undertaken to inform the demand and possible outcome of these changes and insight work to be carried out to understand if that is one of the reasons behind people not having children.”