A leading fertility doctor has called for childless women in their 30s to consider freezing their eggs in case they find themselves unable to conceive when they are ready to have a baby.

Gillian Lockwood, from Midland Fertility Services, said more and more women were postponing having a family, sometimes with distressing consequences.

"Social factors are causing women to delay pregnancy; the older you are, the more difficult it becomes to get pregnant and the greater the chance of a miscarriage or abnormality," she told the British Fertility Society's summer conference.