A child at the centre of a surrogacy battle is to be taken from the mother who has brought him up for 17 months and given to the couple with whom she made the agreement.

The boy has lived all his life in Bristol with his natural mother, her husband and his half-siblings. But he was conceived using sperm from a man who had asked the woman to act as surrogate so that he could bring up the child with his wife. When the child was born, the woman refused to give him up.

Yesterday she was ordered to relinquish her son after judges ruled that she had tricked the couple and had never intended to give him to them. They said that the child’s natural father and his wife would make better parents than the couple he knows as his mother and father.

Court staff will now accompany the couple, known as Mr and Mrs J., from Leeds to Bristol so that they can collect the boy and raise him as their own.

Mr J. made an agreement to inseminate the woman, referred to in court as Mrs P. in 2005, on condition that the child would be given to him and his wife on its birth. When she did not honour that agreement, they started legal proceedings.

Mr and Mrs J. were awarded custody this month by Bristol County Court, but the mother lodged an appeal. It was rejected yesterday by three Court of Appeal judges, who backed the county court ruling that Mr and Mrs J. would make better parents.

Their judgment said that the mother had always intended to keep the baby and had deceived the couple into thinking she would give him up.

Mr Justice Coleridge, at the county court, had found that Mrs P., who already had several children, was motivated by “a compulsive desire to bear further children” and never intended to let Mr J. have the baby.

He said that Mr and Mrs P. had been good parents to the boy but ruled that their deception in agreeing to the surrogacy with the intention of keeping the baby suggested that Mr and Mrs J. would make better parents.

Cared for by his natural father and his wife, the child was “most likely to grow into a happy and balanced adult and fulfil his potential as a human”.

Mrs P. retained custody of the child pending the appeal. But its dismissal by Lord Justice Thorpe, Lord Justice Lloyd and Lord Justice Toulson opened the way for Mr J. and his family to travel to Bristol to collect him.

Lord Justice Thorpe supported Mr Justice Coleridge, saying: “The judge crucially found that Mr and Mrs P. had deliberately embarked on a path of deception driven by Mrs P.’s compulsive desire to bear a child, or further children. She had never had any other object but to obtain insemination by surrogacy, with the single purpose of acquiring for herself and her family another child.

“This was of crucial importance, since it informed the judge’s view of the medium and long-term prospects of the child if his care were to be left to Mr and Mrs P.”

Stephen Wildblood, QC, for Mr and Mrs P., had argued that, in law, the couple were the boy’s legal parents and that Mr J. had no right to claim paternal rights without their consent. Lord Justice Thorpe said there was no substance to the submissions.

The judges made a collection order, empowering High Court staff to travel to Bristol with Mr J. to oversee the handover of the child.

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