Scotland’s national maternity data cannot show how many surrogate pregnancies are taking place or analyse what happens to the women and babies involved, The Herald can reveal.
Public Health Scotland (PHS) has confirmed there is no field, code, flag or other identifier within the national maternity data it collects to show whether a pregnancy or birth involves surrogacy.
As a result, the national public health agency cannot produce statistics specifically on surrogate pregnancies or examine health outcomes for the women and babies involved.
That includes issues such as mode of delivery, obstetric complications, neonatal admission, maternal readmission and postnatal mental-health outcomes.
PHS said the absence of a specific identifier was what prevented it from carrying out such analysis.
The public health body also said searches carried out in response to The Herald’s Freedom of Information request found no correspondence, meeting minutes, proposals, options papers or data-development requests since June 2024 about introducing a surrogacy identifier or addressing the absence of national maternity data.
The findings have prompted fresh calls for greater oversight of surrogacy in Scotland.
Labour MP Tracy Gilbert said: “The Scottish and UK Governments must urgently address the lack of oversight around surrogacy, but we also need a wider debate about whether surrogacy should be permitted at all.
“The current inconsistencies in guidance and the lack of reliable data raise serious questions about whether the practice can be properly regulated and whether the risks to women and babies are fully understood.”
Read More:
- MP says only two Scottish NHS boards have surrogacy guidance
- NHS apologises after telling bereaved family Herald figures were wrong
- Scotland maternity triage review findings due 'soon' amid scrutiny
- Stranraer and Caithness campaigners welcome Scotland maternity review
The national data gap comes after concerns were raised about the guidance available to NHS staff dealing with surrogacy.
Five had no policy, four had policies overdue for review, one had guidance in draft and another referred staff to Department of Health and Social Care guidance.
Further responses obtained by The Herald show some individual health boards are also unable to reliably identify surrogate pregnancies within their own systems.
NHS Ayrshire and Arran said neither its coded maternity admissions nor the Scottish Morbidity Record maternity dataset records whether a pregnancy, mother or birth involves a surrogate.
It said the information may appear in individual case notes, but establishing how many cases there had been would require staff to identify patients and manually examine their records.
The board also said its BadgerNet maternity system contains no structured field or code for surrogacy.
NHS Forth Valley similarly said it does not record surrogacy through a dedicated field or reporting category in its maternity, incident, complaints or safeguarding systems.
Information may instead appear in free-text records, meaning searches depend on particular terms having been entered by staff and may not identify every case.
Separate information released by the Scottish Government shows no relevant records were identified in searches of two key areas of national maternity policy.
The Government said searches found no records referring to surrogacy, surrogate pregnancy, intended parents or parental orders which had been held by or provided to the Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce.
It also found no records showing that surrogacy or the care of surrogate mothers and babies had been proposed for consideration as part of the 2026 independent review of maternity services in Scotland.
The Government has, however, considered collecting some surrogacy-related information through fertility services, including the number of NHS and self-funded surrogacy treatments and the number of patients on waiting lists.
It stressed that this did not amount to an established national dataset of surrogate pregnancies or births and said it found no further information concerning the recording of surrogate status within Scottish maternity datasets.
Under current law, the woman who gives birth is the child’s legal mother, regardless of whether she has a genetic connection to the baby.
Intended parents normally have to apply for a parental order following the birth for legal parenthood to be transferred to them.
Until that happens, questions can arise over matters including consent to medical treatment and access to confidential information.
There were 980 applications for parental orders across the UK in 2025, almost twice the number recorded in 2015.
Of the children involved, 150 were born in the UK, with the remainder born overseas, including in countries such as the US, Ukraine, Nigeria, Georgia, Colombia and Mexico.
Ms Gilbert said: “I would like to see the UK Government lead a full and frank debate on the future of surrogacy, including whether it should be banned.
“In the meantime, there must be greater transparency, robust data collection and a clear understanding of the risks involved.
“The welfare of women and children must be at the forefront of these discussions.”
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “Surrogacy is a private agreement between the surrogate and intended parents and the numbers of surrogacy arrangements are not recorded centrally.
“Intended parents must apply through the court for a parental order once the baby is born to become their legal parent and the number of parental orders granted in Scotland each year are recorded in the Parental Order Register, held by National Records of Scotland.”
However, parental-order figures do not provide the same information as maternity data and cannot be used to analyse pregnancy, birth or health outcomes for surrogate mothers and babies.