Shivani Raja

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.