Ben Bradley to stay Tory vice-chair after ‘vasectomies for unemployed’ row

Theresa May’s spokesman has said Ben Bradley will keep his job as Conservative vice-chair for young people, despite having suggested that unemployed people should opt for free vasectomies rather than having children they could not afford.

The prime minister’s press secretary said Bradley’s apology was the “right thing to do”, but added that his views had changed since he wrote the 2012 blogpost, when he was 22. Asked whether Bradley would be keeping his job, the spokesman confirmed that he would.

Bradley said he was sorry on Tuesday after it emerged he had claimed that the UK would soon be “drowning in a vast sea of unemployed wasters” if jobless families had four or five children while others limited themselves to one or two.

In the blogpost revealed by BuzzFeed, Bradley said: “It’s horrendous that there are families out there that can make vastly more than the average wage, (or in some cases more than a bloody good wage) just because they have 10 kids. Sorry but how many children you have is a choice; if you can’t afford them, stop having them! Vasectomies are free.

“There are hundreds of families in the UK who earn over £60,000 in benefits without lifting a finger because they have so many kids (and for the rest of us that’s a wage of over £90,000 before tax!).”

Another post subsequently emerged under the headline: “Public sector workers: They don’t know they’re born!”

“I can’t believe for the life of me that people in the public sector are so lost in their own fantasy land that they can’t see how good they’ve got it,” Bradley wrote. “Yes, okay, many teachers and teaching assistants and nurses work hard for their money and deserve to get excellent pay and pensions, but headmasters on seventy-odd grand a year?”

Bradley, who unexpectedly defeated Labour’s Alan Meale last year to become the Tory MP for Mansfield, made the comments in 2012 in support of a government policy for a benefit cap.

Iain Duncan Smith, the former work and pensions secretary who was the architect of the policy, told ITV’s Good Morning Britain programme: “The proposal actually had nothing to do with people having vasectomies or the numbers of children. The proposal about the benefit cap was limiting the amount people can collect together in the course of a number of different benefits, so it would never get above essentially average earnings. That was the principle and actually that has turned out to be reasonably well received.

“All the evidence now shows those in the benefit cap are more likely to go back to work and have gone back to work directly as a result. All of those are positives. They had nothing to do with whether people have children or do not have children.”

Bradley, who is now 28 and was promoted to Conservative vice-chair representing young people in May’s new year reshuffle, apologised for the blogpost and said he had since matured. Labour said the comments were evidence that the “nasty party” lived on.