Public service work
We help fertility patients, parents and their children to be better informed about the law, and we lobby actively to improve the law for diverse modern families.
We work closely with leading UK charities and patient organisations working in the fertility sector (including Infertility Network UK, the Donor Conception Network, Surrogacy UK and COTS) and provide expert support to Stonewall and other organisations on gay and lesbian parenting issues.
We support various online forums, giving free legal advice (including hosting the Fertility Friends Ask a Lawyer page) and our website is a unique legal resource, designed to be a dynamic, evolving information resource about fertility law and parenting law, available free to everyone.
We are respected experts in Parliamentary and government circles on fertility law issues and Natalie Gamble has met Prime Minister Gordon Brown at a reception at 10 Downing Street. We have given evidence to the Department of Health and to the HFEA's Ethics and Law Advisory Committee, as well as preparing Parliamentary briefings for both Houses of Parliament. We are also regular national media commentators on fertility law issues (see our media coverage page for more).
We have a long track record of winning legal changes which benefit fertiilty patients and parents in alternative family structures. In particular:
- Natalie Gamble was a leading supporter of the abolition of fertility clinics' duty to consider the 'need for a father' before giving treatment, and of the new rights for gay and lesbian parents. She was quoted in the televised Parliamentary debate, was widely interviewed in the national media (including on the Radio 4 Today Programme), contributed to Parliamentary briefings prepared by the Department of Health, Stonewall and the Progress Educational Trust, and was a panel speaker at a debate on the issue in the Houses of Parliament (see Natalie’s profile for further detail).
- We persuaded the government to make last minute changes to the law on embryo storage in September 2009, ensuring that surrogacy patients had equal rights to extended embryo storage (see our blog for further detail).
- In April 2010 our expert evidence given to the Department of Health led to important changes being made to nationality law, giving surrogate children born abroad improved rights to British nationality.
We are currently lobbying for improvements to surrogacy law. Natalie was quoted by name as a leading legal authority during the Parliamentary debates on surrogacy last year, and drafted several amendments to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill 2008 which were debated in Committee. We believe there is further work to be done, and will continue to lobby for improvements to UK surrogacy law.
