Iain Duncan Smith exposes and condemns Labour's record on the family
On the eve of the publication of a government green paper on the family, Iain Duncan Smith, Chairman of the Centre for Social Justice and former Conservative Leader, issued a dossier exposing Labour's record of family failure.
Mr Duncan Smith, who will host a press conference on Wednesday afternoon (details below) highlighting the damage done to the family by the Labour government, said:
"Thirteen years of Labour misrule have inflicted grave damage on the family. All the evidence shows that children brought up in two-parent families do far better in life. Yet under Labour, rates of family breakdown have soared.
- Over 40 per cent of children are now born outside marriage.
- Intentional harm has risen 34 per cent in the last 4 years.
- The UK has the 4th highest teenage pregnancy rate in the world.
- Alcohol consumption by UK children has doubled in the last 15 years; 1 in 4 children now take drugs, compared to 1 in 20 twenty years ago.
- Children living in single parent or broken families are far more likely to experience serious abuse than those living in two-parent families;
- Labour has scrapped all recognition of marriage in the tax system and in most official forms. It has also distorted the benefits system to make it more profitable for couples with children to live apart.
- Britain is one of the very few countries in the advanced world, like Mexico and Turkey, that does not recognise marriage in the tax system.
"Most shocking of all, the government now admits that 200,000 children live in homes where there is a known high risk case of domestic abuse and violence. The figures also show that a child living with a non-biological father is eight times more likely to be on the “at risk” register and 50 times more likely to die from injuries inflicted by an adult living in the home.
"Labour should be ashamed of their record. The UK spends more public money on children than most other advanced countries, and gets some of the worst results.
"Only by recognising and supporting marriage in the tax system, and abolishing the couple penalty in the benefit system, will we begin to restore the British family to health.
"We also need to recognise the cost of family breakdown, which has been estimated at £24billion a year. At present, we spend a miserly 0.02 per cent of that sum on preventing family breakdown. We need to invest in measures that will support families, such as local family hubs providing a range of ancillary services, and extra health visitors to support vulnerable families when their children are very young.
The time has come to recognise that stable families are the key to happy and healthy children. The time has also come to recognise that marriage is the cement that holds families together and is the essential foundation of a successful society."
Government Failure on the Family: A Decade of Social Breakdown
- The Government has said that all family structures deliver the same outcomes. This is not supported by the evidence which clearly points to marriage producing the best outcomes for children; just one in eleven married couples split before their child's fifth birthday compared to one in three unmarried couples.
- The Government has viewed family stability to be of such little value that it no longer keeps the statistics for marital status.
- British married couples are virtually alone in Europe in being ignored in the tax system. The Government calls recognising marriage in the tax system “social engineering” and yet in the developed world Britain is joined only by Turkey and Mexico in not recognising marriage.
- Married couples are financially disadvantaged in the benefit system through the couple penalty creating an incentive for people to live apart.
- Government has been prepared to invest £24 billion in picking up the pieces of family breakdown but only 0.02 per cent of that on prevention.
- SureStart was supposed to support vulnerable families and yet in many cases its original aim has been distorted by the Government to become a childcare provider.
- Government policy has been aimed at supporting children but has largely ignored the family as a whole.
- The OECD concluded that British teenagers are the unhappiest in Europe.
Government Failure exposed in Detail:
The OECD report says that:
- UK children are the worst for drunkenness amongst 13-15 year olds
- UK children are the 4th highest for NEETs
- UK children have the 4th highest teenage pregnancy rates
We spend more on children than most OECD countries.
A child who does not grow up in a two-parent family is:
- 75 per cent more likely to fail at school
- 70 per cent more likely to be a drug addict50 per cent more likely to have an alcohol problem
- 40 per cent more likely to have a serious debt problem
- 35 per cent more likely to experience unemployment / welfare dependency
All the family trends are moving in the wrong direction
- The number of children born outside marriage increased from 8 per cent in 1970 to 41 per cent in 2003
- The incidence of intentional harm against children has risen 34 per cent in 4 years
- Youth unemployment is higher today than in 1997
- Children's alcohol consumption has doubled in 15 years
- 26 per cent of children have taken drugs compared with 5 per cent in 1987
- Drug deaths have risen 100-fold since 1968
A Manifesto for Happy and Healthy Families
- Establish a Department for Families
- Recognise and support marriage in tax system
- Reinstate the collection of marital status statistics
- Abolish the couple penalty in the benefits system
- Support families though the establishing of family hubs
- Expand and enhance the health visitor profession for early years support
- Intensive support for vulnerable families
- National provision of parenting programmes
- Full family fostering
- Reform of family law (see CSJ family law commission)
Press Conference:
IAIN DUNCAN SMITH MP TO LAUNCH GREEN PAPER ON THE FAMILY WEDNESDAY 20 JANUARY
Former Leader of the Conservative Party Iain Duncan Smith will launch a new report calling for a raft of new measures designed to give families genuine help, Wednesday 20 January - London.
The report,The Centre for Social Justice Green Paper on the Family, is the latest in a series on family policy from the think-tank set up by Mr Duncan Smith. It is critical of Government policies on marriage and the family.
Date: Wednesday 20thJanuary 2010
Place: One Queen Anne's Gate, Westminster, London,SW1H 9BT
Time: 2.30 pm
For media inquiries, please contact Nick Wood of Media Intelligence Partners Ltd on 07889 617003 or 0203 008 8146 or Alistair Thompson on 07970 162225 or 0203 008 8145.
NOTES TO EDITORS
The Centre for Social Justice is an independent think tank established, by Rt Hon Iain Duncan Smith MP in 2004, to seek effective solutions to the poverty that blights parts of Britain.
In July 2007 the group published Breakthrough Britain. Ending the Costs of Social Breakdown. The paper presented over 190 policy proposals aimed at ending the growing social divide in Britain.
Subsequent reports have put forward proposals for reform of the police, prisons, social housing, the asylum system and family law and marriage (December 2009). Other reports have dealt with street gangs and early intervention to help families with young children.
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