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Another senior Tory has questioned whether the poor are fit to have children, it emerged yesterday.

Wealthy MP and ex-banker Claire Perry - one of the party's rising female stars and a former adviser to Chancellor George Osborne - made the outrageous remark as she defended a decision to axe grants for pregnant women.

Her comment came to light the day after new Conservative Lord Howard Flight embarrassed the Prime Minister by complaining the welfare system encourages "breeding" among the poor.

And last week David Cameron's friend and adviser Lord Young had to resign after claiming slump-hit Britons had "never had it so good".

Mr Osborne is also in the line of fire because of his links to Mrs Perry, who worked for him for four years before becoming an MP in May.

Her outburst came in a debate earlier this month after a health in pregnancy grant was scrapped.

She was attending a Commons committee hearing when a Labour MP said the £190 hand-out, paid to all pregnant women, prevented many being plunged into abject poverty by the expense of having a baby.

Married mother-of-three Mrs Perry, 46, declared: "Given that the families are in extreme poverty, as the honourable lady points out, should they be having children at that point?" Labour MP Alison McGovern later described Mrs Perry's comment as being "like something out of the Victorian era".

Ms McGovern, 29, said: "It is all very well for wealthy former bankers like Claire Perry to declare that the poor should not start families but children don't always come along at the right time. And what about women who become pregnant only to find themselves thrown on the dole as a result of this Government's policies? "It is wrong to punish mothers-to-be and unborn children like this."

She added: "First Howard Flight, now this. It is the same old Tories. David Cameron told voters during the election that his party had changed. Clearly it hasn't.

"It is still packed full of people who look down on the hard-up and think they have no right to a family."

Mr Cameron insisted former MP Mr Flight, 62, who has not yet been invested by the Queen, should be allowed to take his seat in the Lords after delivering an abject apology. But critics said Mr Flight's remarks raised serious doubts about the PM's judgment and showed that the Tories remained hopelessly out of touch and were a "nasty" party.

Like Mr Flight, who has amassed a multi-million pound fortune, Mrs Perry has worked for a string of city firms.

The Oxford and Harvard graduate was employed by the Bank of America, Credit Suisse and management consultants McKinsey & Company before being hired by Mr Osborne in 2006. Three years later, her party connections allowed her to become Tory candidate for the safe Wiltshire seat of Devizes and she was elected.

In August, she put her six-bedroom rectory home in the village of Broadchalke, near Salisbury, Wilts, on the market for £3.25million.

She is believed to split her time between there and a £1million flat in Chelsea, West London.

Mrs Perry's spokesman refused to discuss the issue: "We are not going to comment at all."

Mrs Perry also had a spectacular bust-up with posh Parliamentary sketchwriter Quentin Letts at this year's Tory conference in Birmingham.

He described her as a "buxom amazon" and an "incorrigible crawler" so she confronted him at breakfast to ask: "Why are you writing this s* * * about me? People like you are the reason so few good women go into politics."

The room then quietened as Letts returned fire, calling her "an appalling sycophant who duly deserves a bit of treatment from us sketchwriters".

FORCED TO QUIT FORCED TO APOLOGISE