Ms Natalie Gamble:

I guess the starting point would be what the law is in the country and what it requires of people who are going through surrogacy arrangements. If we look at the world map of surrogacy, as it were, there are those countries where there is specific legal regulation that states that if it is done in a certain way and particular steps are followed, then legal parentage is recognised. It is very easy to see, in those jurisdictions, what steps are being taken. We then have those countries where there is no legal regulation of surrogacy, but it happens. This was the case in India before it was closed down, and we have seen it in Thailand. I am referring to the countries where surrogacy keeps moving. Surrogacy happens there for a while and then the government clamps down and stops it, and then it moves somewhere else. With those countries it is much more difficult to see what those standards would be, because there is no uniformity or legal regulation of it. We would be relying on the regulation of professional bodies, doctors and so on. It would be much harder to see what is really going on in those places. That is probably the easiest way to draw a clear distinction between countries where there is specific law and regulation around this, and countries where there is not.