Anger at ‘selfish’ move to let single parents raise surrogate children

PLANS to allow single men and women to raise surrogate children have been criticised by campaigners.

They will no longer be barred from bringing up surrogate youngsters after Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt abandoned a High Court challenge.

But MPs said the decision undermined the principle that the needs of the child should come first.

Mr Hunt’s climbdown was revealed in a High Court test case on Friday, when lawyers for the Department of Health accepted that the current two-parent rule discriminates against single-parent families. Officials confirmed yesterday that ministers are considering legislation to allow single parenthood of a surrogate child. Senior Labour MP Frank Field told the Mail on Sunday: ‘In all these decisions, the natural rights of children get overlooked. Parenting is a huge job and it’s about time that children are put centre stage, not selfish adults.’

Rob Flello, Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent South, said the ruling was a ‘tragedy’.

The test case involved a baby identified as Z who was born in the US in August 014. The British father paid a surrogate mother £30,000 to have the child using his sperm and a donor egg.

A judge rejected his demand for a parental order under the 008 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, which limits the orders to married couples, those in civil partnerships or ‘parents in an enduring family relationship’.

The High Court’s most senior family law judge, President of the Family Division Sir James Munby, ruled the law was incompatible with Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which bans discrimination. But Sir James refused to tell Mr Hunt how the law should be changed, insisting that Parliament must make the decision.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said that it would ‘give full consideration to this judgment, how best to address the incompatibility, and the legislative options to do so.’