A British government plan to allow single people to raise surrogate children has been criticised as an attack on family values. The government move to amend the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 comes on foot of a ruling by a High Court judge in 2016 that confining the rearing of surrogate children to couples breached the human rights of single people. Reacting to the announcement, Ciarán Kelly of The Christian Institute said it was yet another attack on family values. “All the evidence shows that children do better when raised by their mother and father – and best of all when those parents are married. It is beneficial to the children. It is beneficial to society. Why does the Government want to undermine this?” Meanwhile, Robert Flello MP, vice-chairman of the All Parliamentary Pro-Life Group, stressed that the focus overall should be on the child. “The right for the child to have two parents is deliberately overlooked,” he said. “A child has the right to be brought up in a loving family by its mother and father and that should be the starting point for government and society.”