Sperm and egg donors can get hundreds in cash payments

Payments for sperm and egg donors were given the go-ahead today amid fears too many people are using unregulated websites in a desperate bid to start a family.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority agreed IVF clinics can compensate donors with one-off payments of hundreds of pounds.

The landmark decision is intended to make it easier for couples to have IVF in Britain, and clamp down on rogue sites where donors are not screened, regulated or monitored.

Demand for sperm has been fuelled by lesbian couples, single women and women delaying motherhood, the HFEA said.

Juliet Thizzard, its head of policy, added: "Shortage is undeniably an issue. Patients are still waiting for donor conception treatment and [are increasingly] going overseas".

Ms Thizzard warned about the increase of unregulated websites that claim to introduce donors to recipients: "Some are making private arrangements where they are organising sperm donation among themselves.

"We have already written to these websites to highlight our concerns about the risks that sperm donors and recipients can put themselves at."

Until now there has been a cap on payments to donors of £250 per cycle or course of sperm donation.

But some experts believe higher payments, which exist in other European countries such as Spain, could attract the wrong type of donor and breach EU guidelines that donation should be voluntary.