A radical review of fertility laws could help more couples access treatment in the future, a Midland expert said last night.

Dr Gillian Lockwood, of Walsall-based Midland Fertility Services, welcomed a consultation designed to update 15-year-old fertility laws, which was announced yesterday.

The review of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act could allow couples to choose the sex of their baby and enable single women to access fertility treatment.

The need for clinics to consider the welfare of any child born as a result of fertility treatment, including the need for a father or male figure in its life, could also be dropped.

Dr Lockwood, medical director of MFS in Aldridge, said the requirement for couples to be counselled on whether they were fit to be parents had delayed fertility treatment in the past and said she hoped a relaxation would help speed the process.

She said an update of the current laws would also raise awareness that IVF and other fertility practices were no longer experimental or dangerous.

"This treatment has now come of age, no longer is it scary, dangerous or unsuccessful - it is actually safe and should be more widely available," Dr Lockwood said.

"It should be moved into the 21st century, with the discrimination and stigma removed from couples accessing treatment - couples who just want to be treated in the same way as other couples who want to have babies.

"If some of these stringent guidelines and complexities are relaxed it will make it easier to provide treatment in a time and cost effective way.

"We do spend a lot of time chasing GPs, who are filling in assessments about whether people will make suitable parents, which is a legal requirement but nothing to do with providing good fertility care."

She added: "We should move away from the idea that a couple have to prove that they can be better than average parents before they can have access to treatment, especially when half of all babies are born by accident."

Dr Lockwood, who sat on the Scientific Select Committee, which came up with the proposals for a consultation, said she was concerned too much emphasis was being placed on the more controversial elements, such as selecting a baby's sex and lesbian couples wanting a child.

"My biggest concern when too much emphasis is laid on these rare things like women in their 50s wanting donor eggs, or couples wanting to make designer babies to be a stem cell donor for another child - this is what distorts public perceptions."

Issues raised in the review include the use of sex selection for non-medical purposes, the welfare of the child, screening techniques, and internet sperm banks.

Public Health Minister Caroline Flint said there were important questions to be asked about sex selection and the guidance doctors would need to be given if it were allowed for family balancing purposes.

"I think there are very good reasons why sex selection has been allowed on medical grounds, rather than nonmedical grounds," she said.

"There are important and complex questions to be asked but I do think that we need to ask these questions."

Sex selection is already allowed in order to avoid babies being born with sex links disorders such as haemophilia, but other countries including Belgium allow its use for non-medical reasons.

The consultation also asks if sex selection were more widely available, how many children of one gender should a couple already have before they are allowed to use screening techniques to try for a child of another gender.