Surrogacy Law and Legal Parenthood

Josh Newbury Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2026 Westminster Hall

[Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I thank my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson), for opening this debate so thoroughly and thoughtfully. When I read Adam’s petition, I was taken back to the moment that I became a dad. My husband and I fostered and then adopted our children. I remember holding my daughter and son for the first time like it was yesterday. In those moments, there was no question in my mind that I wanted to be their dad, and that is what I am. That is why I was struck by Adam’s description of the moment he and his partner first saw their baby. They became dads in that moment too. However, as my hon. Friend set out, the law does not recognise that reality.

I understand why the current system came about. The rights and autonomy of surrogates and the need to safeguard children should never be brushed aside. Judicial oversight is also important, and reform should not mean removing protections for the surrogate or the child. However, I think we should ask whether the current system gets that balance right.

We now have a situation where almost 1,000 children were born through surrogacy in 2025—roughly double the number a decade earlier. For families who choose surrogacy, the journey to having a child has often already been extraordinarily long. So once that child is born and is being cared for by their intended parents, it is reasonable to ask whether the law should leave their legal parenthood unresolved for months. That has practical implications, which I remember from my time fostering, such as not being able to give consent for something as simple as a vaccination or blood test.

There is a practical point here about our courts. We rightly ask our family courts to deal with cases where there is a genuine dispute, where a child’s welfare needs judicial consideration or where someone’s rights need to be protected. But if a surrogacy arrangement has been properly assessed before the birth, the intended parents have undergone the appropriate checks, the surrogate has had any independent advice and counselling she may need and the necessary safeguards are in place, do we really need to go through a court process to establish legal parenthood?

[Steve Yemm]

My hon. Friend neglected to mention the consent of the mother in his list. Does he agree that that is also of paramount importance?

[Josh Newbury]

Yes, absolutely. I am making the case that where everybody involved—of course, the mother is paramount in that—is happy with the arrangement and wants to go ahead with it, it could happen ahead of time. My personal belief is that there should be a cooling-off period, even if there is a reform, to ensure space for mothers to change their minds. I am making the point that the system could be far more efficient. I am not suggesting that we remove the courts from the process altogether—they should be there when needed—but a properly regulated system could allow straightforward cases to be dealt with before birth while retaining a route to the courts where there is disagreement, a safeguarding concern, consent changes or judicial oversight is required. That would not weaken safeguards; it would allow the courts to focus their time and attention on the cases where their intervention matters most.

[Rebecca Smith]

The hon. Member and I have a great shared interest in fostering and adoption and have spoken about those issues a lot in the past. To clarify, is he saying that there should still be a six-week gap between the birth and the parental order being signed, or that there should not, but that if there was a problem, the courts could still get involved afterwards? That strikes me as clouding the water even more. I appreciate where he is coming from, but I was not 100% clear on what he was saying.

[Josh Newbury]

I am not a legal expert and do not intend to insert myself into that particular legal debate, but my perspective is that if arrangements are made beforehand and a birth mother changes her mind, there should be a route back to the court and that should be built into the system. We have the six-week window that allows time for reflection, but I believe there is a way in the vast majority of cases where everybody will be happy for the arrangements to go forward and for the intended family to move on with their lives, without having to go to court, unless there is a change of heart.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

It is worth putting on record that the Law Commission report in 2023 suggested that, if everything was decided before the birth, the legal parents could have the rights from day one, but the biological, or surrogate, mother would have a chance to go against that in the first six weeks of the baby’s life. Does the hon. Member agree with the Law Commission report, which still has that fundamental safeguard, but which also recognises that the intended parents are the parents from day one?

--- Later in debate ---

[Josh Newbury]

The hon. Lady and I are very much on the same wavelength; I was about to move on to that. On the carefully formulated proposals the Law Commission came forward with, it has been through that debate and has struck a fair balance. It recommended a new regulated pathway under which intended parents could become legal parents from birth, but with screening and safeguards, while retaining parental orders for cases where court involvement is still necessary, as we have heard.

I would like to acknowledge and thank the 268 of my Cannock Chase constituents who signed the petition—the highest number of signatures in the west midlands. I do not know the individual circumstances of those signatories: some might have experienced infertility, some might be part of the LGBT community and some might simply believe that our laws should better reflect the reality of modern families. However, the signatures of our constituents right across the country show us that this issue touches many more lives than we realise.

I therefore welcome the Government’s recognition that the current pathway and delay to legal parenthood can cause some uncertainty. My ask is simply that we move the conversation and the debate forward. Will the Minister tell us whether discussions are taking place about how we might modernise the system and make sure our courts deal with the cases that genuinely require their time, while retaining the safeguards that matter to surrogates and children? Call me naive, Mr Pritchard, but I believe we can do both, and I hope this rich debate can be a step towards getting the balance right.

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

No west midlands Member of Parliament is naive, so don’t worry about that.