Parents who hire foreign surrogates ‘risk losing children’

Natalie Gamble, a fertility law specialist, warned that hundreds of parents who use women in India to have a child are facing a legal timebomb. Many are failing to register as their baby's legal parents so effectively have no rights, which could be a particular issue if they divorce.

Ms Gamble, founder of Britain's first fertility law firm, Gamble and Ghevaert, told the Standard: "There's so little information so couples don't realise what they're getting into. They're slipping through the net and don't realise they're not the legal parents.

"You're basically strangers looking after a child and it's potentially a nightmare. This has all sorts of implications with health visitors, schools or if the parents divorce. This is a timebomb."

Couples using surrogates have six months after their child's birth to register as the legal parents when they bring the baby back to Britain. They must go to court and effectively adopt the child.

But many are ignorant of this process, called a parental order, which means schools and social services can

challenge their position as the child's legal guardians.

Senior legal figures, including High Court judge Mr Justice McFarlane, are trying to get the law on surrogacy reviewed but Ms Gamble said that at the moment couples have no protection unless they register.

Her firm has been inundated with calls from couples worried about the pitfalls of foreign surrogacy. She deals with gay men conceiving with the help of surrogate mothers in the US and India as well as lesbian couples and single women conceiving with friends.

Last year 31-year-old Ms Gamble, herself the mother of two children born using a sperm donor, was involved in a landmark case when a couple using a Ukrainian surrogate went to the High Court to prove their parental rights. She also dealt with the case of London fireman Andy Bathie, who was targeted by the Child Support Agency for child maintenance payments after donating sperm to a lesbian couple.

Ms Gamble said: "We have seen a liberalisation of more unusual forms of fertility treatment in the UK in the past few years, such as donor insemination for lesbian couples and single women, surrogacy, embryo testing and gay parenting.

"These create complex legal situations which increasing numbers of people need expert help with." Paying surrogates for carrying a child is illegal in Britain, but Ms Gamble said she would back a review into surrogacy laws.

She said: "Commercialised reproduction is a very sensitive issue. We've taken the moral high ground in this country but we need to live in the real world whatever the ethical issues.

"The reality is that people are going to go abroad. The priority is about protecting the rights of children."