Fertility Action is supporting Dame Caroline Dinenage MP as she brings the issue of fertility regulation back to Parliament today, with an amendment to the Health Bill due to be debated at Report Stage on Monday 7 September.
The amendment follows Caroline’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Regulation) Bill, introduced in July 2025, which sought to address the growing gap between the way fertility services are now delivered and the regulatory protections surrounding patients.
Fertility Action has been in communication with Caroline’s team since July 2025 and has continued to support the need for stronger patient protections as fertility care evolves.
For Fertility Action, this is fundamentally about one thing: the wellbeing and protection of patients.
Fertility treatment can be one of the most emotionally, psychologically and financially significant experiences a person goes through, with patients spending thousands of pounds on treatment, sharing deeply personal medical information and entrusting their eggs, sperm or embryos to organisations they believe will care for them safely.
Yet modern fertility care increasingly extends beyond the traditional clinic setting, with patients accessing services through online providers, digital platforms and organisations operating across different parts of the fertility pathway.
For patients, however, these distinctions can mean very little. They experience one fertility journey – and they need to know that the organisations involved in that journey are appropriately accountable and that there are meaningful protections if something goes wrong.
Recent events have demonstrated why this matters.
The closure of Apricity Fertility in January 2025 left many patients facing uncertainty about their treatment and what would happen next. The situation helped expose questions about whether existing regulation had kept pace with the increasingly complex way fertility services are delivered.
In response to this, Caroline subsequently introduced her Bill in July 2025, seeking to strengthen the regulatory framework around modern fertility services.
More recently, the insolvency of Ovom Care in Portugal has again highlighted the vulnerability patients can face when a fertility provider ceases operating. As Ovom operated outside the UK regulatory jurisdiction, the circumstances are different from those surrounding UK providers. However, the experience of affected patients demonstrates a wider and important point: when fertility providers fail, the consequences for patients extends far beyond the loss of a commercial service.
Patients can be left worried about ongoing treatment, medical records, finances and, critically, the safe care and transfer of eggs, sperm and embryos. Arrangements have since been put in place for AVA Clinic to act as a receiving centre and support affected patients, but the situation has nevertheless underlined the importance of robust safeguards and continuity of care.
For Fertility Action, these cases are not about criticising individual providers or the fertility sector as a whole. The charity believes good fertility services matter enormously and that many providers work extremely hard to deliver high-quality care.
But supporting fertility services and putting patients first are not competing positions.
Good regulation should give patients confidence that the organisations they trust with their treatment, money, personal information and reproductive material are operating within clear standards – and that there is a plan to protect them when circumstances change.
Katie Rollings, Founder and CEO of Fertility Action, said:
“When you are going through fertility treatment, you should not have to become an expert in regulation to understand who is responsible for your care or what protection you have if something goes wrong.
“Patients place an extraordinary amount of trust in fertility providers. They may be investing thousands of pounds, sharing deeply personal medical information and entrusting their eggs, sperm or embryos to an organisation. Behind all of that is often years of hope, heartbreak and emotional investment.
“When a provider closes, patients don’t experience that simply as a business failure. They experience it as uncertainty about their treatment, their money, their medical records and, in some cases, the embryos, sperm or eggs that may represent their last or only chance of having a child. Patient wellbeing has to be at the heart of any conversation about fertility regulation – emotionally, psychologically and financially, understanding the nuances of each fertility pathway”
“Dame Caroline identified this issue more than a year ago, and we have supported her work since we first engaged with her team in July 2025. The fact that the issue is still being brought back to Parliament makes it very clear that this concern has not gone away.
“We now have an opportunity to make sure regulation reflects the reality of modern fertility care – and that patients are not left carrying the consequences when the system fails to protect them.”
Dame Caroline Dinenage MP said:
“With the NHS pulling back fertility treatment funding, more people are going private and looking for the cheapest option. They may not be aware that plenty of UK based consultants and online clinics are not overseen by our regulator, the HFEA.
“I’ve tabled an amendment to the Health Bill to modernise regulation and haul it into the 21st century.”
Caroline’s original Bill received its First Reading in the House of Commons on 15 July 2025 but did not progress further. Her latest amendment brings the same core issue back before Parliament, with the Health Bill reaching Report Stage on Monday 7 September.
Fertility Action believes that modernising fertility regulation should ultimately be guided by a simple principle: patients deserve to know that there are clear standards, accountability and meaningful protections around the care they receive.
Katie Rollings added:
“Fertility treatment already asks an enormous amount of patients, who should not also have to carry the burden of working out whether the organisation they have trusted is properly accountable if something goes wrong.
“I truly believe that good regulation isn’t about putting unnecessary barriers in the way of fertility care. It is about creating a system in which patients can have confidence that their wellbeing comes first.
“Fertility care is not simply a transaction. For the people going through it, the stakes could not be higher. Regulation must recognise that.”
