Ms Natalie Gamble:

I thank the committee for inviting me to speak before it. I have spent the past 15 years working with more than 1,500 families created through UK and international surrogacy.

I passionately believe in ethical surrogacy in which everyone involved gives informed consent, there is a direct relationship between the parties and a fair balance of power, any facilitators play a positive role by promoting safety and stability, and the child’s lifelong welfare is safeguarded.

In my long experience, the overwhelming majority of intended parents are conscientious and want to navigate surrogacy in a responsible way. The overwhelming majority of surrogates make an informed choice to carry a child to help someone else, never intending for that child to be theirs. Research across decades has shown that surrogacy children are thriving. What matters to children is not the number or gender of their parents but the quality of their parental attachments. Children born through surrogacy are, unsurprisingly, loved and cherished.

Since I started out in surrogacy law practice in 2005, I have seen surrogacy grow exponentially. There are now approximately 400 UK parentage applications each year with an even split between UK and international surrogacy arrangements. The growing numbers of children born in this way should not be prejudiced by the circumstances of their births. Other children take for granted their right to secure legal parenthood, nationality, inheritance and identity. Children born through surrogacy deserve the same - to belong in the family they were conceived to be part of, born into and raised by.

As lawmakers, therefore, the challenge for the committee is this: how does it influence the environment for surrogacy to help ensure it operates ethically, and, at the same time, safeguard the interests of the children who are being born? First, in a global digital world, intended parents are no longer constrained by national boundaries. Global surrogacy is a reality. It needs to be managed and not ignored in the hope it will go away. International law increasingly stipulates that children born through surrogacy have a right to recognition, whether under the European Convention on Human Rights, ECHR, as part of EU law or via a future Hague Convention.

Second, promoting ethical surrogacy is a complex task that needs a sophisticated understanding of how surrogacy really works and not simplistic categorisations. It is naive to paint domestic or altruistic surrogacy as wholly desirable and international or commercial surrogacy as wholly undesirable. There are no such bright lines. In truth, there are a range of approaches to surrogacy involving good and bad practice everywhere. A far more useful question is what makes surrogacy ethical and how to promote that.

Third, policies designed to restrict surrogacy practice usually have counterproductive outcomes. In the UK, our 1980s laws restricting surrogacy arrangement intended to stifle surrogacy to make it "wither on the vine". In fact, what has happened is that it has ended up fostering unregulated surrogacy; conducted on social media and driving parents overseas in their hundreds.

So, how do things work in the UK and what lessons can be learned? Initially, UK law treats the surrogate, and, if married, her spouse, as the child’s legal parents, even if the child is born overseas. UK parents can, however, apply to the family court for a post-birth parental order, which extinguishes the status of the surrogate and makes them the legal parents. Importantly, parental orders are distinct from adoption orders, recognising that these are children of assisted reproduction. Before making a parental order, the court must ensure the parents are eligible. It must scrutinise payments, ensure the surrogate has given free consent and be content that the order will safeguard the lifelong welfare of the child.

As an advocate for progressive reform, I want the UK process to be streamlined so that children are recognised in the right families from birth without delay. There is some suggestion in the Law Commission’s 2019 law reform proposals that in the UK, we may get automatic recognition of some international surrogacy arrangements and parenthood from birth without a court process in some domestic cases. As I understand it, however, Ireland is a step behind without any current system for properly recognising children as the legal children of both their parents. Automatic recognition would be the most progressive remedy but failing that, Ireland could adopt post-birth parentage applications, similar to the UK, or even pre-birth applications.

Whatever the route, legal parenthood must be Ireland's first and most urgent priority. It should apply to all family forms and all children, whether born in Ireland or overseas, and it should be retrospective so that no children are left behind. By way of comparison, each time the UK has extended eligibility for the parental order to new groups of intended parents, it has provided for a catch-up period in which retrospective applications can be made. The wider and more complex public policy questions are also important but to have any chance of having a real impact, Ireland needs to regulate rather than restrict. It needs to focus not on simplistic questions about whether domestic or altruistic surrogacy is preferable but on the harder and more sophisticated question of how to promote ethical surrogacy practice effectively.