Nearly 1,000 children were born to surrogates for UK intended parents in 2025, double the number recorded a decade earlier, according to figures obtained by The Guardian. Applications for parental orders — the legal mechanism that transfers parenthood from the surrogate to the intended parents — surpassed 980 that year. Of those, roughly 150 children were born inside the UK; the rest were born abroad, with the United States, Ukraine, Nigeria, Georgia, Colombia, and Mexico the most common countries of birth The Guardian.

The surge has exposed the structural limits of legislation that is roughly 40 years old. Under current UK law, the surrogate must be listed on the baby's birth certificate as its mother. Intended parents must then apply for a parental order after birth, a process that can take months. During that interval, legal parenthood sits with the surrogate, creating practical and clinical gaps. Prof Gillian Black, co-author of the Law Commission's 2023 surrogacy review, noted cases where a child needing hospital treatment required the surrogate's legal consent, even though the child was already living with the intended parents The Guardian.

The UK permits only altruistic surrogacy: surrogates may receive reimbursement for expenses but cannot be paid a fee. By contrast, the US, Mexico, and Nigeria operate commercial models where women are compensated. Several European jurisdictions — France, Germany, Italy, and Spain — heavily restrict or ban the practice outright. That regulatory patchwork pushes many UK intended parents abroad, where surrogates can be paid and where the legal landscape differs sharply from domestic protections.

The Law Commission, led by review author Prof Nicholas Hopkins with Black as co-author, published its recommendations in 2023. The central proposal would grant legal parenthood to intended parents from the moment of birth, eliminating the limbo period that current law creates. The review also called for greater regulatory oversight of surrogacy agencies and pre-conception medical and safeguarding screening. The government accepted the recommendations, which informed a draft bill. But ministers have since indicated that surrogacy reform is not a legislative priority, and the UK government postponed proposed updates to surrogacy legislation in 2025 Progress Educational Trust.

Complicating the picture, the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission published a joint consultation paper in February 2026 (LCCP 244 / SLCDP 167) proposing a new pathway to legal parenthood in surrogacy. A full report, "Building families through surrogacy: a new law," followed in March 2026. The Law Commission states its proposed reforms are designed to encourage intended parents to make domestic surrogacy arrangements rather than going overseas. Meanwhile, available data remains incomplete: there is no comprehensive dataset on all UK surrogacy activity, and current figures rely on self-reported data on matches and births, as noted in a Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology briefing published in February 2026 POST.

Demand has outstripped domestic supply. Helen Prosser, founder and director of the surrogacy agency Brilliant Beginnings, said the agency had been forced to turn away new intended parents as demand for surrogates soared above available supply. The rise has been driven by an increase in gay couples seeking to be parents, increasing infertility, and shifting cultural attitudes. According to the HFEA, surrogacy cycles accounted for just 0.4% of all IVF treatments in the UK in 2022, with 130 surrogacy patients recorded in 2012 — a figure that contextualises how rapidly the landscape has shifted HFEA.

The stalling of reform carries consequences that Hopkins has articulated directly. He warned that while the draft bill languishes in parliament, more parents will opt for overseas surrogacy, where there may be a greater risk of exploitation or legal difficulties. That concern is sharpened by the international dimension: the majority of UK parental order applications in 2025 involved children born abroad, in jurisdictions with varying degrees of regulatory oversight.

The debate also draws international institutional scrutiny. UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, has called for surrogacy to be abolished globally — a position that places her at odds with reformers who argue that regulated domestic surrogacy, rather than prohibition, better protects surrogates and intended parents alike.

The broader context here is a regulatory system caught between rising demand and legislative inertia. The Law Commission states the number of children born from surrogacy has increased almost fourfold over the last decade, yet the governing statute dates to an era when surrogacy was rare and poorly understood. The 2023 review offered a coherent reform framework — birth-order parenthood, agency oversight, pre-conception screening — and the government accepted it in principle. What has not followed is parliamentary time. Each year of delay widens the gap between the law as written and the family structures it is supposed to govern. Hopkins's warning about overseas arrangements is not speculative: the 2025 figures already show that more than 80% of parental order applications involved children born outside the UK. Whether the February and March 2026 joint consultation outputs from the two law commissions generate sufficient political momentum to break that logjam will depend on factors well beyond the merits of the policy itself.