Surrogacy Law and Legal Parenthood

I beg to move, That this House has considered e-petition 763161 relating to surrogacy law and legal parenthood. It is always a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Pritchard, and I am sure today will be no different. The petition calls for a change in the law so that the intended parents of babies born through surrogacy can be considered to be the legal parents from the moment of their child’s birth. Under current law, that is not possible. Intended parents must go through a months-long process in the courts and be visited by a social worker before they are considered to be the parents of the children in the eyes of the law. Ahead of this debate, I met the petition’s creator, Adam, his fiancé, Jamie, and their daughter, Leven, who was born via surrogacy in Connecticut. I am pleased to say that Adam and Jamie have joined us in the Public Gallery today. Although baby Leven has not joined them, she made a cameo appearance on our call ahead of the debate. Adam and Jamie are listed as Leven’s parents on her birth certificate in the United States, but more than six months after her birth, they still are not recognised as her legal parents at home in the UK. That is what prompted Adam to create this petition. When we met, he said, “We’re changing Leven’s nappies, we’re putting her to bed—we are her parents, we’re bringing her up” and yet he says that babies like her are in “legal limbo” under current legislation. My role today is to introduce the petition by setting out the petitioners’ views and framing the debate to follow. It is good to see so much interest from Members across the House. In preparation, as well as meeting Adam, I have drawn on the expertise of a range of organisations and individuals, with the expert support of the petitions team. They are often not thanked enough, so I place on record my thanks to the entire team for their support in preparing for the debate. We met groups such as Surrogacy Concern, Stop Surrogacy Now UK and Brilliant Beginnings, and Dr Herjeet Marway of the University of Birmingham, who is the founding chairperson of SurrogacyUK’s ethics committee. We also met Professor Nick Hopkins of University College London, a former law commissioner for England and Wales, and Professor Gillian Black of the Scottish Law Commission and the University of Edinburgh. Together, they authored the joint Law Commission report on surrogacy reform, which was published in 2023. I will start with the current state of the law and the reforms proposed by that Law Commission report. When a child is born to parents via surrogacy, whether in this country or abroad, as baby Leven was, the surrogate mother is considered the legal mother at birth under UK law. If she is married or in a civil partnership, her partner will automatically be the second parent on the birth certificate, irrespective of the child’s genetics. There are children out there today whose parents, as considered under UK law, have no genetic relationship to the child at all. That is because in UK law, the person who gives birth to a baby, and no one else, is considered the mother. That has led to a complicated reality in today’s world, where a growing share of babies are not born via natural conception. If you give birth using a donor egg, you are considered to be the child’s mother in the eyes of the law. But if you cannot carry a baby, and if you and your partner have an embryo that is biologically yours carried by a surrogate, you are not considered to be the legal parents when your child is born. Intended parents and their surrogates can draft a surrogacy agreement setting out how they want parental rights to be arranged for the child, but those documents have no legal standing in the UK. To become legal parents, intended parents must apply for a parental order through the courts. They have to make that application between six weeks and six months after the baby’s birth. Organisations that specialise in assisting intended parents say that the process normally takes between six and 12 months to complete. In that time, the baby will almost invariably be living with the intended parents, but legally, they are strangers to that child.

The hon. Gentleman is putting the case very well. There are also very practical hurdles, such as registering the child with a GP, the child’s medical circumstances and applying for a passport. The whole thing is illogical. The practicalities add to the timescale, and it is time that the Government address the issue.

It is always a pleasure to see the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) in his place in this Chamber. I will touch on health later, so I ask him to hold fire.

My hon. Friend is being very generous with his time, which I very much appreciate. He and I share the desire for strict rules to prevent abuse of any kind, as I am sure everyone in the House does. I want to make a point relevant specifically to Scotland. In England, the suitability of intended parents is assessed by the courts and through a publicly funded system, but it is funded privately in Scotland, which means that intended parents potentially have to pay £2,000 or £3,000 extra of their own money to go through the process. Will my hon. Friend join me in calling on the Scottish Government to find a reform to fix that system?

My hon. Friend is right to raise the issue of finance, which I will touch on briefly, so I ask him to bear with me as I get to that part of my speech. Opponents say that the parental order process is really complex. The document that intended parents have to submit is 200 pages long, meaning that many will seek legal advice. Adam and Jamie say that they expect legal fees for their parental order to be in excess of £10,000. We have just heard from my hon. Friend that it can be even more costly in other parts of the United Kingdom. That money is very real, and intended parents face very real financial difficulties. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, the process can cause real practical problems. In fact, I have heard of cases in which surrogates have had to dial in to medical appointments for their child in the US for months after birth, because the hospital at home is unable to recognise the intended parents as responsible for their child’s health decisions. Experts say that, in their experience, the most distressing part of the process for most intended parents is the court-mandated social worker visit. Supporters of the current arrangement compare it to a visit from a health visitor, but opponents say that there is no comparison. The Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service is the agency that advises the courts on children’s welfare, and in the vast majority of cases it is involved where a child is believed to be at risk. However, CAFCASS is also involved in surrogacy cases. Its assessments for a parental order involve criminal checks, child protection reports, home visits with parents and a full, detailed report. Although it is incredibly rare to see CAFCASS reports on intended parents that are anything but wholly positive, parents find it extremely distressing to be questioned and scrutinised in a way that parents conceiving without the need for a surrogate simply do not experience. In 2018, as a result of those difficulties, a previous Government asked the Law Commission for England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission to jointly consider reforms to UK surrogacy law. It was a significant piece of work, and the report was published in 2023. It recommended “a new pathway to legal parenthood” in surrogacy cases, with the screening of intended parents taking place before birth, so that they could be recognised as legal parents from birth. The proposed pre-birth arrangements included an agreement between the surrogate and the intended parents, with independent legal advice provided to all parties, a preconception assessment of the child’s welfare, and the agreement of a regulated surrogacy organisation to recognise the surrogacy agreement. If the surrogate then withdrew consent, the existing parental order process would apply. If the surrogate changed their mind before the birth, they would be the legal parent at birth. If they changed their mind in the six weeks following birth, they would be able to apply for a parental order. The authors of the report strongly felt that that struck a balance between protecting all parties—the surrogate, the parents and the children—and, crucially, keeping the child’s welfare as the central concern. Having said that, it is really important to bring in the voices of Professor Hopkins and Professor Black, who made it very clear ahead of this debate that they never intended that part of their proposal to be carved out and delivered in isolation. They proposed a wider package of reforms, and they say that it was only part of a comprehensive solution. Although some who advocate changes to surrogacy law argue that the issue of parental orders can be dealt with as a quick win, the professors believe that it should be addressed as part of a wider package. That package includes, for example, creating a mandatory surrogacy register so that children could find out more about their birth mother and, with their consent, her family, if they wish. It is also important to note that the Law Commission’s proposal for a new pathway to legal parenthood for intended parents would only apply to surrogacy arrangements here in the UK. It is proposed that the existing parental order system would continue to apply when babies are born abroad via surrogacy. The Law Commission report concluded that it would be impossible to ensure that laws abroad are in line with what we would consider UK norms. That concern is flagged by some of the groups opposed to surrogacy arrangements, as the second most popular destination for UK surrogacy is Nigeria—a country currently subject to special restrictions when it comes to adopting a child due to child welfare concerns. In preparing for this debate, I heard worrying reports of surrogate mothers, often living in real poverty abroad, being pressed to sign legal agreements under extreme time pressure and without independent legal advice. That is far from being the case everywhere. However, it can never be acceptable, and we should make sure there are proper legal safeguards in place. The Law Commission’s hope is that, by maintaining the UK’s altruistic approach to surrogacy—that is, keeping it not for profit—and updating the law, more intended parents will be able to pursue surrogacy here in the UK and make use of a new parental pathway to be recognised as legal parents from birth. The petition focuses on a specific part of surrogacy law, but it feeds into a much wider debate. There are some quite stark divisions on the issue, which is understandably very emotive for a large number of people. However, what seems clear is that the current law on surrogacy is no longer working and that a wider conversation about how we should change the legislation in this area would be welcome. I know the Government have said that they will look at this issue when time and capacity allow, but I am very interested to hear more from the Minister about what that might look like and when we might be able to expect it.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I welcome this debate. As we know, the petition asks for parental orders to be permitted at birth. I believe that Members should approach the proposal with extreme caution. The number of people who have signed the petition—over 113,000, including 226 of my own constituents—is clearly testament to the strength of feeling on the issues. However, the petitioners frame the parental order process as an obstacle to parental rights, but that is fundamentally misleading. The legal process provides important protections for surrogate women and the children they carry. Currently, intended parents can apply for parental orders only after six weeks from the birth, and they must usually do so within six months. That cooling-off period provides a vital safeguard for the surrogate mother, and we should not dispense with it lightly. I believe we need to take a step back and remember why this House has historically approached surrogacy with so much caution. It is now undeniable that we have moved well beyond the purposes originally used to justify IVF and assisted reproductive technologies. IVF was initially intended to help a childless couple have a child, not to create a contractual market out of pregnancy. That sense of mission creep is also evident when we look at the Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985. The Warnock committee, whose report led to the Act, did not regard surrogacy as simply another form of fertility treatment. Now, over 40 years later, surrogacy has become just another service routinely offered at clinics across the country. Technology allows us to separate genetic parenthood, gestational motherhood and social parenthood. However, it does not mean those relationships are interchangeable. Technology may give us choices, but it does not absolve us from making ethical judgments about those choices. It is worth noting that the UK is an outlier in allowing any form of surrogacy at all. Surrogacy is much more strictly limited, or even completely prohibited, in countries including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. We know that some of those countries are particularly liberal in other areas, so the fact that they are strong on this gives us reason to question why they take that position. That reflects the serious ethical questions that arise when a child is intentionally separated from the woman who carried them in the womb. Commercial surrogacy is illegal across the EU, where it is classed as a form of child trafficking. Indeed, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls has recommended the global abolition of surrogacy. Last year she described surrogacy as characterised by the exploitation of women and children, including girls. In any future reforms of surrogacy legislation, the welfare and safety of women and children should remain our paramount concern. I acknowledge that the desire of many people who turn to surrogacy is for a child, and that that is a profound need within them. I think that is something on which we are all able to agree. Some women face infertility or repeated pregnancy loss, and some face medical conditions that make it impossible or even unsafe for them to carry a pregnancy themselves. For some people, surrogacy may seem to be the only path to having a child with a genetic connection to them. I do not question the deep desire for that, nor do I underestimate the pain that can come from wanting a child and being unable to have one. That said, compassion for those experiences cannot require us to overlook the women and children affected by surrogacy. By its very nature, surrogacy involves a woman’s body becoming a means to an end. She is carrying a child for the benefit of another family. My concern is that our efforts to help people to become parents risk constructing a system in which women’s reproductive capacity becomes merely a resource for others to use. One of my main concerns with the petition is that it implies that surrogacy is closer to natural conception than to adoption; I believe that is again misguided. With adoption we do not pretend that the birth mother is irrelevant simply because she will not raise the child herself. That woman has already nurtured the child in her womb for nine months and the law rightly recognises that her role matters: the original birth record remains in existence and the adopted child can access it later in life, as an adult, if they wish. Similarly, a surrogate may not intend to raise the child she carries, but that does not mean that her role should be legally obliterated at birth. We should also consider the needs of the child. A baby bonds with their mother in utero regardless of whether the surrogate uses her own egg in the pregnancy. The child’s birth mother is an important person in the child’s story and the law should therefore recognise the birth mother’s indispensable contribution in bringing new life into the world. I also have concerns about financial incentives. In this country a surrogate mother cannot simply be paid a fee for producing a baby. She may receive reasonable expenses, including for things such as maternity clothing, travel and loss of earnings, but typical reimbursements now reach as much as £25,000. I think we would all agree that that is quite a substantial sum, which should give us pause for thought. There is an important distinction between reimbursement and income. It is one thing if a woman is compensated for genuine expenses, but if pregnancy becomes a source of substantial financial benefit, we need to ask whether we are still talking about altruism or whether we are creating a market in all but name. Pregnancy is not risk-free; it can involve serious medical complications. However, uncertainty about whether a payment is reimbursement of an expense or a fee clouds the situation. We cannot discuss this issue without considering the wider international picture. Most parental orders for UK parents now involve commercial surrogacy abroad; we have heard a lot about that already. It should concern us all that international surrogacy takes place in jurisdictions where the economic circumstances of surrogate mothers are very different from those in Britain. If wealthy countries normalise the commissioning of pregnancies, there will inevitably be markets that meet that demand. In most cases, the women with the least economic power become the people expected to take the greatest physical risks. I will finish by reiterating that I have enormous sympathy for people who want children and cannot have them naturally. Their longing is real, but true compassion must extend to everyone involved, including to the women whose bodies bear the burdens of pregnancy and childbirth and to the children they bear. Do the Government remain committed to the parental order process and the safeguards that it provides? Those safeguards are not outdated as the petition suggests; indeed, they are needed now more than ever, especially as international surrogacy arrangements are becoming the norm for intended parents in the UK. The parental order process exists to ensure that a child’s welfare comes first and that a surrogate mother’s consent is freely given. Any reform should strengthen those protections for women and children, not diminish them.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. In the years since the passage of the Surrogacy Arrangements Act, the number of babies born as a result of surrogacy has increased and the nature of surrogacy arrangements has evolved. As I look through Hansard it appears that, in spite of that change, surrogacy has seldom been debated in this place. I therefore welcome this debate; although I do not agree with its framing, I believe it is long overdue. This debate is critical as there are fundamental human rights at stake. The first are the rights of women: the rights of women as parents to be protected, to have the very best care and to have no outside pressure on decisions relating to their healthcare and their bodies; and the right of women living in poverty, in war zones or in vulnerable situations, here in the UK and across the globe, not to be forced, coerced or trafficked to service the growing demand for surrogates. The second are the rights of children, as set out in the United Nations convention on the rights of the child, to know where they came from, to have a nationality, and to be cared for by their parents, not separated from them, where possible. Today I will focus on the rights of women. The Law Commission’s previously published proposals recommend tipping the balance of power away from the rights of the birth mother. That is clearly stated in the introduction of its core report: “Our reforms respect the autonomy of the surrogate—if she withdraws her consent, the courts will make the final decision on parental status.” If we were to put those proposals on the statute book, a woman who used her own egg as part of a surrogacy agreement, gave birth to a child and then changed her mind would end up in a court battle in which the judge would decide who the parent or parents of the child are. At present, if the surrogate withholds her consent, a parental order cannot be made; she remains the legal parent. However, under the commission’s preferred model, the birth mother’s name would be removed from the birth certificate altogether, and a judge would be forced to consider the living arrangements of the child until the court proceedings concluded. The commission’s proposals would shift the balance of rights to the intended parents, but it is important that we, as legislators, consider the bigger picture. There is likely to be an economic imbalance between the surrogate mother and the intended—commissioning—parents: by definition, they are commissioning a child. At present, the expenses paid to surrogates far exceed what was anticipated when the 1985 Act was passed. Although the Law Commission’s proposals claim to provide clarity on expenses, they could still result in commissioning parents paying tens of thousands of pounds to a surrogate, including payments for holidays and gifts. That economic power imbalance prompts the question: is it ever a free choice for a surrogate to enter into a surrogacy agreement? Before concluding, I want to talk about the international impact of surrogacy. Analysis by Stop Surrogacy Now UK suggests that, in most years since 2013, more than 60% of parental order applications in England and Wales related to surrogacy arrangements where the child was born abroad. It is false hope to think that these proposals will stop the demand from the UK for international surrogacy.

Two of my constituents recently travelled to Mexico, where their children were born by surrogacy. Those births were facilitated by a company called My Surrogacy Journey, which is listed on gov.uk. While in Mexico, they had repeated traumatic experiences with the company relating to issues including insurance for their children, accusations of bullying towards staff and repeated efforts to silence any constructive criticism. I understand that other Members of this House have received similar complaints. Given the severity of these matters, does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should take My Surrogacy Journey down from gov.uk pending a review by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority?

I agree, and I will come to some of those matters shortly. It is estimated that the international surrogacy industry will be worth more than $200 billion by 2032. The decisions that we take about surrogacy in the UK can help protect vulnerable women and girls in war-torn countries such as Ukraine, as has been mentioned, and low-income countries such as Nigeria from being forced, coerced and trafficked to service the growing demand. I appreciate the time and consideration that the Law Commission gave to this issue. It heard directly from women who had acted as surrogates, were left displaced and received inadequate medical care. It found that women who had been used as surrogates had not even been told about the genetic parentage make-up of the embryos that had been transferred into their bodies and, as a result, had no information about any inherited conditions that could affect the pregnancy and put them or the baby at risk. I also welcome the spotlight document published in the last few days by the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, who makes it clear that women in the UK are not only at risk of forced surrogacy but already being identified as such. I have called for a wider debate on surrogacy that would have at its heart women at risk of forced surrogacy and their children. The Government must fully reject the Law Commission’s proposals. The Scottish Government have already drafted guidance in preparation for the proposals being put on the statute book. Until they are rejected by the UK Government, such preparation will continue. I hope I have evidenced why we must have a much wider debate on surrogacy. Fifty per cent of responses to the Law Commission’s consultation called for a total ban on surrogacy in the UK. I fully support such a ban, but it should be based on a wider debate that draws on evidence and focuses on reducing harm. In the interim, the Government must immediately recognise the harm and risk that is being inflicted on women and children through international surrogacy and take steps to cut off the UK’s growing demand for it, as that is the only way to play our part in ending the coercion and trafficking of women and children. I understand people’s desire to become parents, but that desire should not take priority over the rights of a child. Surrogacy asks all of us to answer very difficult questions, but answer them we must.

The topic of this debate is a matter of great sensitivity, but I oppose the proposal in the petition. Automatically recognising intended parents as legal parents from birth could remove important safeguards at precisely the moment when a child is most vulnerable. We should begin with the most important person in this debate: the child. A child cannot consent to a surrogacy arrangement, and they cannot understand the promises adults have made. They cannot know what might happen if circumstances change—and circumstances can change. We have seen cases where arrangements that began with everyone in agreement broke down during the pregnancy. In 2023, the Court of Appeal dealt with a case where a parental order was set aside and the surrogate mother was ultimately awarded contact with the child four times a year. That child was conceived using the surrogate’s own egg. She had to fight for that contact against the wishes of the commissioning parents. When we are told that everything is agreed before birth, we have to ask what happens when it is not. The current law recognises that possibility. A parental order cannot be applied for until six weeks after birth, and the surrogate has to confirm that she is willingly giving up her parental rights. That six-week period is not a pointless delay; it is a breathing space and a safeguard. It recognises that giving birth to a child is not simply the completion of a contract, but a profound physical and emotional event, and that the law should allow time for circumstances and feelings to be properly considered. The current system also provides scrutiny through the family court and CAFCASS social workers. If we remove that oversight, we are not simply removing paperwork; we are removing an independent layer of protection around a child. We need to understand how much that matters, because surrogacy is growing rapidly. Parental order applications increased from just 117 in 2011 to 537 in 2025, and the majority of applications now involve international surrogacy. That should make us more cautious, not less. When a child is born through an international arrangement, there can be questions about consent, identity, immigration, the circumstances of the surrogate and whether proper safeguards were followed. As recently as 2025, the High Court dealt with a case where the intended parents had never met the surrogate carrying the child, and did not even have information about her identity. The case took more than 15 months and involved four court hearings. That shows us why proper scrutiny is necessary. Compassion must never mean abandoning scrutiny, because when adults disagree, a child has to live with the consequences. That is why I cannot support automatic legal parenthood from birth. The child must come first.