Ms Natalie Gamble:

I will take these in turn and deal with the statistics first. I apologise but I do not have my briefing paper in front of me. I think the 69% figure relates to the numbers of parents who reported choosing to go overseas because of the lack of professional availability of surrogacy matching in the UK. With the statistics around parental orders, they are approximate but for the past few years we have seen around 400 parental orders made each year, with around half of those relating to UK surrogacy and half relating to international surrogacy. I do not think the 69% figure came from that. I hope that clarifies the matter.

The Senator spoke about "erasing" the birth mother. It is important to say surrogates very strongly and universally do not consider themselves mothers of these children. They consider themselves surrogates who are carrying a child for someone else; it is not that the child belongs to anyone but that child is the child of the intended parents, who she is helping.