Limit on cash for surrogate motherhood

Paid pregnancy: Review recommends curbs on expenses given by parents and tighter control of agencies

FIVE-FIGURE sums paid to surrogate mothers must be reduced and tighter regulations introduced to prevent the development of a trade in human babies, a government review has concluded.

Surrogacy involves such an intimate area of personal life and is so fraught with peril that it would be wrong to allow agencies or organisations introducing couples to surrogate mothers to operate unfettered. Even where the arrangement is entirely private, the state has a duty to protect the vulnerable and new laws are needed, says the review, published yesterday.

The review, chaired by Professor Margaret Brazier, was commissioned by the Government in June 1997, following a series of cases in which surrogate mothers received payments of up to pounds 12,000 for their services.

Commercial surrogacy isbanned in Britain under the Surrogacy Arrangements Act, 1985. The payment of expenses, however, is allowed under the Act leaving a loophole which has enabled some women to earn large sums. An estimated 50 to 100 surrogate births take place each year and in the vast majority money changes hands. A surrogate mother cannot be forced to give up her baby if she changes her mind.

The review says payments must be limited to "verifiable expenses" including items such as additional food, maternity clothes and travel expenses. Professor Brazier said that in exceptional circumstances, where the woman had to give up work because of illness during the pregnancy, the sum might be as high as pounds 4,000 but in most cases it would be substantially less. "We are saying no woman should suffer financial penalty. But we don't judge payments of pounds 10,000 as likely to be real expenses that she has incurred."

Professor Brazier, head of the department of medicine, law and bioethics at Manchester University, said surrogacy agencies should be registered and subject to a code of practice and a new law was needed to make it a criminal offence to operate an unregistered agency. Individual couples and surrogate mothers would not be liable to prosecution.

Tessa Jowell, the Health minister, welcomed the review's "pragmatic" recommendation for a voluntary code of practice but signalled caution on the need for legislation. "It is an extraordinarily difficult issue to regulate. It is an issue which sits absolutely at the boundary of public policy and people's private lives. We can't ban surrogacy. We don't believe it should be encouraged but at the same time we must recognise that it does take place."

Kim Cotton, director of Cots, Britain's only surrogacy agency, welcomed the proposals on regulation but dismissed the limits on payments as unworkable.

"I don't understand how we could be breaking the law if someone were found to have paid a surrogate mother. We don't have control over pay now. It is a personal arrangement between the commissioning couple and the surrogate mother."