Tracy Gilbert MP: speeches

Speeches

• 10 Sept 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  A year ago, my constituent John McNab was stabbed in Leith in the early hours of 2 September 2025, and was tragically pronounced dead near the scene shortly afterwards. John’s mum Lisa has gone to heroic efforts to see bleed kits rolled out across key places, and has campaigned tirelessly, including by bringing the knife angel—a 27-foot structure made of 100,000 knives and blades seized by police officers across the UK—to Leith as part of raising awareness. Will the Leader of the House join me in paying tribute to Lisa’s bravery and campaigning efforts, and will he facilitate a debate in Government time on the work being done across the UK to reduce knife crime?

• 7 Sept 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I welcome the £14 million of funding released this month to create opportunities for young people in my constituency. The money will train them in jobs for construction in net zero sectors. Does my hon. Friend agree that the approach that the Government have taken to empowering and funding local stakeholders to grow local economies should be adopted by the SNP Scottish Government?

• 7 Sept 2026 · Surrogacy Law and Legal Parenthood · Hansard source

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  I agree, and I will come to some of those matters shortly. It is estimated that the international surrogacy industry will be worth more than $200 billion by 2032. The decisions that we take about surrogacy in the UK can help protect vulnerable women and girls in war-torn countries such as Ukraine, as has been mentioned, and low-income countries such as Nigeria from being forced, coerced and trafficked to service the growing demand. I appreciate the time and consideration that the Law Commission gave to this issue. It heard directly from women who had acted as surrogates, were left displaced and received inadequate medical care. It found that women who had been used as surrogates had not even been told about the genetic parentage make-up of the embryos that had been transferred into their bodies and, as a result, had no information about any inherited conditions that could affect the pregnancy and put them or the baby at risk. I also welcome the spotlight document published in the last few days by the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, who makes it clear that women in the UK are not only at risk of forced surrogacy but already being identified as such. I have called for a wider debate on surrogacy that would have at its heart women at risk of forced surrogacy and their children. The Government must fully reject the Law Commission’s proposals. The Scottish Government have already drafted guidance in preparation for the proposals being put on the statute book. Until they are rejected by the UK Government, such preparation will continue. I hope I have evidenced why we must have a much wider debate on surrogacy. Fifty per cent of responses to the Law Commission’s consultation called for a total ban on surrogacy in the UK. I fully support such a ban, but it should be based on a wider debate that draws on evidence and focuses on reducing harm. In the interim, the Government must immediately recognise the harm and risk that is being inflicted on women and children through international surrogacy and take steps to cut off the UK’s growing demand for it, as that is the only way to play our part in ending the coercion and trafficking of women and children. I understand people’s desire to become parents, but that desire should not take priority over the rights of a child. Surrogacy asks all of us to answer very difficult questions, but answer them we must.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Surrogacy Law and Legal Parenthood · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. In the years since the passage of the Surrogacy Arrangements Act, the number of babies born as a result of surrogacy has increased and the nature of surrogacy arrangements has evolved. As I look through Hansard it appears that, in spite of that change, surrogacy has seldom been debated in this place. I therefore welcome this debate; although I do not agree with its framing, I believe it is long overdue. This debate is critical as there are fundamental human rights at stake. The first are the rights of women: the rights of women as parents to be protected, to have the very best care and to have no outside pressure on decisions relating to their healthcare and their bodies; and the right of women living in poverty, in war zones or in vulnerable situations, here in the UK and across the globe, not to be forced, coerced or trafficked to service the growing demand for surrogates. The second are the rights of children, as set out in the United Nations convention on the rights of the child, to know where they came from, to have a nationality, and to be cared for by their parents, not separated from them, where possible. Today I will focus on the rights of women. The Law Commission’s previously published proposals recommend tipping the balance of power away from the rights of the birth mother. That is clearly stated in the introduction of its core report: “Our reforms respect the autonomy of the surrogate—if she withdraws her consent, the courts will make the final decision on parental status.” If we were to put those proposals on the statute book, a woman who used her own egg as part of a surrogacy agreement, gave birth to a child and then changed her mind would end up in a court battle in which the judge would decide who the parent or parents of the child are. At present, if the surrogate withholds her consent, a parental order cannot be made; she remains the legal parent. However, under the commission’s preferred model, the birth mother’s name would be removed from the birth certificate altogether, and a judge would be forced to consider the living arrangements of the child until the court proceedings concluded. The commission’s proposals would shift the balance of rights to the intended parents, but it is important that we, as legislators, consider the bigger picture. There is likely to be an economic imbalance between the surrogate mother and the intended—commissioning—parents: by definition, they are commissioning a child. At present, the expenses paid to surrogates far exceed what was anticipated when the 1985 Act was passed. Although the Law Commission’s proposals claim to provide clarity on expenses, they could still result in commissioning parents paying tens of thousands of pounds to a surrogate, including payments for holidays and gifts. That economic power imbalance prompts the question: is it ever a free choice for a surrogate to enter into a surrogacy agreement? Before concluding, I want to talk about the international impact of surrogacy. Analysis by Stop Surrogacy Now UK suggests that, in most years since 2013, more than 60% of parental order applications in England and Wales related to surrogacy arrangements where the child was born abroad. It is false hope to think that these proposals will stop the demand from the UK for international surrogacy.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Surrogacy Law and Legal Parenthood · Hansard source

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  I want to pick up on the hon. Lady’s point about healthcare and situations in which women cannot carry a pregnancy. Is she aware of the health risks posed by women carrying embryos that are not their own, and the additional risks to surrogate mothers from being a surrogate?

• 4 Sept 2026 · Infants, Parents and Carers Bill · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) on coming first in the private Member’s Bill ballot and on promoting this Bill. In the previous Session, my private Member’s Bill was the first to pass through this place and the other place, so I wish the right hon. Gentleman similar success with his very important Bill. Having taken through a private Member’s Bill, I know full well the hard work that he and his team will be putting into the proposals, and I want to put on record my thanks to them for doing so. I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Floor of the House about the importance of a baby’s first 1,000 days of life. We all know of the love, care and attention that new-born babies need to thrive. By the time they reach 1,001 days old, they will already have progressed to having some form of independence in eating and communicating. The devastating fact, however, is that in the same timeframe, the impact of financial and health inequalities will already be visible. The gap between the most affluent and the most deprived areas will already be evident in toddlers’ groups and nurseries across our communities. For Labour Members, tackling these inequalities is a fundamental goal. We wanted to be elected to eradicate this unfairness. I am therefore keen to hear from the Minister how this Bill could further the Government’s ambitious tackling child poverty strategy. I want to speak about the growing number of babies across the UK who are born as the result of a surrogacy arrangement either here in the UK or abroad. We cannot be absolutely sure how many babies have been born through a surrogacy arrangement, but what we do know is that the number of parental orders granted by the courts, in line with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008, increased from 132 in 2011 to 450 in 2021. The number of babies being born as the result of surrogacy is far more than the handful of cases that the Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985 had intended to cover. The growing number of babies being born as the result of surrogacy arrangements poses a serious issue that we as legislators must address. I do not intend to cover all the points today, but I want to cover two areas in particular. The number of UK nationals using commercial surrogacy arrangements abroad is on the rise. The explosion in international surrogacy is estimated to be worth a $200 billion industry by 2032. Too many babies in their first 1,001 days are being left in legal limbo, because the Surrogacy Arrangements Act did not legislate for overseas commercial surrogacy arrangements, and, as far as I am aware, this place has not taken a view or held a debate on this issue. My position is clear. We should follow our EU partners in Spain, France and Germany in banning surrogacy and, at the very least, we should work in this place to prevent the harms caused by international surrogacy. The failure of this House to have debated the increasing use of international surrogacy arrangements has resulted in different rules applying between adoption and surrogacy. For instance, the Children and Adoption Act 2006 places a duty on the Secretary of State to maintain and publish a list of countries where restrictions on inter-country adoption apply, yet a similar process does not exist for surrogacy. In 2021, the then Secretary of State used his power to place Nigeria on the list of restricted countries, therefore preventing all adoptions between the UK and Nigeria. The reasons given for this decision, which is still in place today, include unreliable documentation, corruption and evidence of child trafficking. Those harmful and illegal practices, however, are not isolated to adoption. For example, earlier this year, a Nigerian police force made five arrests exposing child trafficking and an illegal surrogacy syndicate under the guise of an orphanage. There is no law currently preventing a child born in such circumstances from being brought to the UK. This void in legislation creates a vacuum where children’s welfare and children’s rights are left unprotected while fuelling the international surrogacy syndicates that put women and girls in developing countries at further risk. My second point is that the procedures and guidance about surrogacy that are available to midwives, doctors, nurses and health teams on maternity wards are often out of date and very patchy. In some parts of the country, midwives may experience a number of births involving a surrogate; others may see very few or none at all. It is therefore even more important that up-to-date guidance is available with the very best information, so that the care of the mother and child, both pre and post birth, is the very best it can be. Through freedom of information requests to all Scottish NHS boards, I have discovered that only NHS Ayrshire and Arran and NHS Fife have active guidance in place for midwives and clinician teams on the care and treatment of surrogate mothers and babies to ensure that the law is followed and to set out where they can access support. Of the other Scottish NHS boards, five have no policy at all, one has a draft policy, four have a policy on which a review is overdue, and one refers to the Department of Health and Social Care guidance. Midwives across Scotland are being left to their own devices in ensuring that babies born under a surrogacy arrangement receive uninterrupted care and treatment. I encourage the Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that maternity wards and midwives across England are not left in the same position.

• 4 Sept 2026 · Infants, Parents and Carers Bill · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree that the Scottish Government must take some action on this matter. In conclusion, I would be keen to see if there are areas where I can work with the right hon. Member for New Forest West to look at changing the law to ensure that babies born through a surrogacy arrangement and the women giving birth to them are no longer forgotten.

• 3 Sept 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Too often, single mothers come to me for help because they are being failed by the Child Maintenance Service. I therefore welcome the Government’s commitment in the tackling child poverty strategy to bring forward legislation to overhaul the CMS. Can the Leader of the House advise me on what progress has been made on that legislation, and may I urge him to ensure that it is brought forward as quickly as possible?