Health bosses yesterday approved plans to ban NHS fertility treatment for women if their husbands are too fat.

Women in Bath and North East Somerset will be denied IVF funding if a partner has a body mass index over 30, meaning they are medically obese.

The move, by the area’s clinical commissioning group, claimed these couples would find it harder to conceive. But experts said it had no basis in fact.

Professor Tim Child, of Oxford Fertility, said it was an excuse to ration IVF.

Women in Bath and North East Somerset will be denied IVF funding if a partner has a body mass index over 30, meaning they are medically obese.

NHS managers said they were making the changes in the face of ‘unprecedented financial challenges’.

But Sarah Norcross, of campaign group Fertility Fairness, said she was ‘appalled’ by the move.