What Ministers should do to help strengthen families
by Michael Tomlinson, Conservative Home:
Paul Embery set a fair challenge in a recent piece on Unherd: ‘Why won’t our spineless politicians stand up for the family?’. He rightly notes that we have one of the highest percentages of lone parents in Europe, and that over a million children have no meaningful contact with their fathers. Indeed, across the UK 2.7 million children have no father figure at home, representing almost one in five of all dependent children. He could have also added that you are more likely as a teenager to own a smart phone than live with both parents.
But he is wrong to accuse all politicians of being lily-livered and failing to talk about this social catastrophe. Or perhaps that comment was aimed at politicians on the Left? For as recently as February, there was a full afternoon’s debate in Westminster Hall, called by my colleague Fiona Bruce on Strengthening Families. There was a leading contribution from Iain Duncan Smith, the founder of the Centre for Social Justice, which Embery rightly cited in his article. The CSJ are doing yet more ground-breaking work in this area, twelve years on from their devastating report Breakdown Britain.
Perhaps some politicians do feel nervous speaking about the family. Maybe they are concerned that their enthusiasm for the family will be mistaken for an attack on single parents, many of whom work extremely hard to bring up their children. However, family life is too critical a topic to steer away from. It is vital that as a society, and indeed as a Government, we commit to strengthening and supporting parents both in their relationships, and in their parenting, to the benefit of whole communities. Especially when we remember that government accepts that family breakdown is a key driver of future poverty.
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