Judge criticises regulator as couples who used sperm donors win right to be called legal parents of their own offspring

Couples who used sperm donors to conceive have had their parental status called into question after “widespread incompetence” in the sector was revealed in court.

Handing down a ruling in the family division of the high court, where seven couples were battling to establish a legal declaration that they were the legal parents of their offspring, judge Sir James Munby said that some couples were suffering problems due to failings in the system.



It has emerged that consent forms, which are signed by couples who are not married or in a civil partnership to ensure legal parentage before treatment begins, had not been properly completed by the clinics involved.

Sir James, president of the family division of the high court, said that these failures painted an “alarming and shocking” picture of the industry.

Referring to a 2013 audit of the UK’s 109 fertility clinics which found 51 paperwork “anomalies” in clinical records that could cast doubt on the legal status of parents, he said there was “widespread incompetence across the sector”.

The judge criticised the industry regulator, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, saying: “The picture revealed is one of what I do not shrink from describing as widespread incompetence across the sector on a scale which must raise questions as to the adequacy if not of the HFEA’s regulation then of the extent of its regulatory powers.”

The judge granted legal declarations of parentage to the couples in the case.

He said that because of the regulator’s failings, couples had been forced into a legal process where they had to divulge “intensely private” details of their family lives in court.

Responding to the ruling, the HEFA said it recognised the situation had been “very stressful for the families involved”.

The statement from the regulator added: “They rightly assumed that legal parenthood was beyond doubt. Finding out that it was not must have been very upsetting.”

HEFA cheif executive Peter Thompson told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We must accept some responsibility for this. I am here today to stand up and accept that responsibility.”

One of the parents involved in the judgement, who chose to remain anonymous, said: “I learned of the clinical errors this year after separating from my partner, so I have been living with the knowledge and fear that my legal status as a parent might be in jeopardy.”

She added that for each of the seven couples involved in the legal proceedings, the clinics had “made simple clerical mistakes and as such appeared to be blasé about their legal responsibility to ensure our children were just that in name and in law”.

Although the families had feared they would be forced to enter into adoption proceedings to secure legal parentage, the judge ruled that they had given their written consent to be parents to the clinics, even if it was not on the specific form required by law.