Gitlab needs to retain the parent branch when creating a merge request

Whenever a merge request is created it sets the parent branch to 'master'. Worse, this shows up in the middle of the MR page and cannot be altered without going to ANOTHER page (a drop-down on this page would more than help). Consequently, one loses all the previously entered information. Seriously, this is beyond horrible and should be fixed as soon as possible or faster than that....