Tory MP apologises for suggesting free sterilisation for unemployed

Conservative Party Vice Chairman for Youth is ‘textbook example of how bloggers should think twice’

Ben Bradley MP
Ben Bradley has apologised for his comments
(Image credit: Twitter)

A Tory MP is in hot water after old blog posts were unearthed in which he suggested sterilising the unemployed and declared that public sector workers “don’t know they’re born”.

Ben Bradley, 28, appointed Conservative Party Vice Chairman for Youth last week, “is turning into a textbook example of how provocative bloggers should think twice before venturing on a career in politics - or at least work out how to erase their internet history”, says The Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow.

Bradley, 28, apologised today over a 2012 blog entry, uncovered by BuzzFeed News, in which he suggests the unemployed should have vasectomies rather than father children they could not afford.

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“Vasectomies are free,” he wrote. “Families who have never worked a day in their lives having 4 or 5 kids and the rest of us having 1 or 2 means it’s not long before we’re drowning in a vast sea of unemployed wasters that we pay to keep!”

In a statement apologising for the blog post, which has been deleted, Bradley said: “My time in politics has allowed me to mature and I now realise that this language is not appropriate.”

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