Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has ordered the wording on some official forms changed so that same-sex couples cannot both declare themselves as a child’s parents. Salvini, interior minister and leader of the League party, is now Italy’s most favoured politician and his socially conservative policies have proven popular among voters. In an interview with a Catholic online newspaper Salvini said he had ordered the identity card application forms for children to be changed to refer to the “mother and father” instead of “parent 1” and “parent 2”.

“We will defend the natural family founded on the union between a man and a woman. I will exert all the power possible,” Salvini told La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana.

In Italy, surrogate pregnancies are illegal and same-sex couples cannot adopt children. However, some courts and city halls have granted parental status to the partner of a mother or father who had children by a previous relationship, even though the right is not enshrined in national law. Salvini said the government would never contemplate surrogate pregnancies “or similar horrors”.