Family Policy

Alan Meale Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Meale. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Jessica Lee) on securing this important debate. I thank her and my other hon. Friends in Westminster Hall today for all the excellent contributions that they have made.

This debate on family policy comes at a particularly auspicious time following the royal wedding, which I mention because I believe the most important relationship is marriage. I believe that Government should support marriage, particularly for the sake of children—many of which I wish upon the happy royal couple, in the fullness of time.

Like many of my hon. Friends in Westminster Hall today, I have practised in the field of law. I did so for well over 20 years—actually, nearly 30 years, but I was reluctant to say that—as the head of a high street law firm. As a result, I do not have a completely doe-eyed view of marriage. In my time practising law, I witnessed the incalculable cost of relationship breakdown, not least the financial price and the personal price paid by children. However, even after taking that cost into account, I still believe that it can be argued persuasively that marriage is good for the stability of family life and that stable families are good for society.

That being the case, if a key question in policy making is about fairness, why do many parents who choose to marry feel penalised for doing so by our tax system? Fiscal policy that was intended to help single mothers, which is a wholly worthy cause, has created the odd situation whereby some couples who want to live together actually live in separate homes because the tax system rewards them for doing so. On a national scale, that is terribly wasteful, not only because shared housing is more efficient but because, as we have already heard today, cohesive family life brings immeasurable benefits to both individuals and society as a whole.

In a research paper produced by the Christian charity CARE in January 2011, “The taxation of families 2009/10”, Phillip Blond, the director of ResPublica, wrote:

“The family is the most fundamental, basic and rooted unit of society…The centre of the family, the thing that holds it together…is the relationship between parents… There is an increased unwillingness for parents to commit to each other which has given rise to a significant increase in cohabitation which in turn has major implications, not only for adults but also for children… A child born to cohabiting parents has a nearly one in two chance of living in a single parent family by the time they reach their fifth birthday, whilst a child born to a married parent has only a one in twelve chance of finding themselves in this situation. The consequences are far reaching. Children from lone parent families—who today constitute nearly one quarter of all children—are 75 per cent more likely to fail at school, 70 per cent more likely to become drug addicts and 50 per cent more likely to become alcohol dependant. Girls from fatherless homes are an over-represented demographic in teen pregnancy statistics, while boys from fatherless families are typically over-represented in criminal gangs.”

Even if one’s ideals do not include marriage as a public act of commitment, there is evidence that marriage as an institution is mutually beneficial, both to the partners in the relationship and to society as a whole. It is also the most important factor in predicting a child’s well-being. Some see supporting marriage through the tax system as regressive, but I see it as progressive.

In the UK, we support single parents financially—directly or indirectly—because it is right to recognise that bringing up children is a hard job at the best of times, particularly if one is more or less alone in doing so. Many single parents are courageous, self-sacrificial and deserve commendation. Sadly, it is also true that many children who grow up in a single-parent household live in poverty. That is not right, but it is also true that almost half of children who live under the poverty line come from two-parent households. It seems wrong that we should incentivise single parents through the tax system to remain single, simply because of the financial benefits that that status affords.

Other research shows that it is harder for couples with children to lift their children out of poverty than it is for single parents. Again, I quote from the CARE paper:

“Although designed to deal with child poverty, tax credits are now locking children into poverty in working households, especially couple households. The latest poverty statistics are those for 2008/2009 which show that of the 2.8 million children living in households with incomes below the official poverty line (60 per cent of median equivalised income), 1.5 million were in households with one or both parents in paid work, 1.3 million (a number that is increasing) were in couple households… The problem arises because tax credits do not take account of the way income is measured for calculating the number of children in poverty. The DWP say that a lone parent with two children would have required net income of £293 per week to be on the poverty line, whereas a couple with two children would have needed £374 per week. However, a couple family’s entitlement to tax credits is the same as that for a comparable lone parent family. Couple families therefore have to earn more, but because of the way the means testing formula works they receive fewer credits… However, there is a further problem. As pre-tax income increases, tax credits reduce… In 2008/09, a lone parent would have needed to earn only £95 per week to be out of poverty. By contrast, the couple family would have needed to earn £283 per week.”

For a number of years, CARE has been pointing out that many couples would be better off financially living apart than living together. Seventy-eight per cent. of the families in CARE’s sample were shown to be better off living apart, even after the additional housing costs were taken into account. Families find themselves better off living apart principally because of the way in which tax credits are structured and means-tested.

[Mr Alan Meale (in the Chair)]

Order. May I ask the hon. Lady to proceed very quickly? I need to call the Front Bench speakers.

[Fiona Bruce]

Certainly, Mr. Meale. I will conclude my remarks.

Marriage is good for society. It is a public institution as well as a private relationship, and as such society as a whole has a stake in supporting the family unit. If society benefits from the family, as it undoubtedly does, families should benefit from society and its fiscal policies, especially for the sake of our children and their children.

[Mr Alan Meale (in the Chair)]

I thank the hon. Lady for speeding up. It is unfortunate that she was called at the very end, but we have to give the Front Benchers time to speak.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Sarah Teather)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Meale. I congratulate the hon. Member for Erewash (Jessica Lee) on—I was going to say winning this debate, but I am not sure whether “winning” is the right word, considering what time she probably got to bed last night. There is some irony in discussing family policy in the least family-friendly institution in the UK. I congratulate all hon. Members on being here and on an interesting and informative debate. I particularly enjoyed the opening remarks of the hon. Lady, which addressed family policy across the piece. I doubt that I will be able to respond to everything in the time remaining, but I will do my best to pick up on as many of the points raised as I can.

I thank the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) for her profound affection for my colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). I will of course pass on her remarks to him. I am sure that he will be terrified, but I will draw his attention to her flattery of his great skills.

The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West said that this goes without saying, but I think it is worth saying again: strong and stable families are the bedrock of a strong and stable society. They are key to ensuring that children grow up in a loving and nurturing environment and develop into healthy, happy, successful adults. The quality of relationships matters. Adults in good, stable relationships have better life outcomes, and so do their children. Families are also the social capital that builds and sustains neighbourhoods and communities, as the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) said eloquently in her introductory remarks. They are the basic unit of society, and they are where we learn the social skills we need to survive and flourish in life. They are where we learn how to form relationships with other people, and the success of those relationships will affect our life outcomes as well as those of our children.

The make-up of the family unit is changing, as several hon. Members said. Families come in many varied shapes and sizes, including single-parent, multi-generational and foster families. Fathers are becoming more involved with their children, which I believe is a positive step forward that the Government should do much to support. Despite the many different changes referred to by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) in his speech, families are, as he also said, happy on the whole with family life. Most families say that they are fairly or very happy; 93% of respondents to a recent BBC poll said that they were happy with their family life.

However, it is vital that we support families as much as we can, and this Government believe that we should do much better. It is our ambition to make this country the most family-friendly in the world. At the heart of all our policy making is the determination to ensure that family services are designed around parents’ needs rather than the other way around, and take account of changing work patterns, the evolving roles of parents and the financial pressures families face.

The hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) said that some people believe that families are not the Government’s business. Sadly, many politicians who consider themselves progressive believe that the family is not an area in which the Government should be involved. There is sometimes a dichotomy between believers in a small state and in a big state regarding what they believe the role of Government should be. However, I believe that the Government have an important role in supporting families, systematically removing the barriers that prevent them from thriving and creating the right environment through legislative change, financial systems and the design of public services so that families can be the best that they can be. That matters to our children, and to their children as well.

It is also important that we intervene to support vulnerable families when things are difficult. All families go through times when things are harder. We know, for example, that there are pressures on families when they have a first child or when children move into the teenage years. Those with many social networks might manage to get through such times, but if life is stacked against people, as in some of the examples given in several hon. Members’ speeches—if they suffer from a mental health problem, have unstable relationships, live in overcrowded housing or have a drug or alcohol problem—it is much more difficult to do so.

That is why the Government are investing in extra health visitors, for example, to support people in the early years. It is why we are doubling the number of family nurse partnerships—to refer to the remarks of the Opposition spokesperson—and why we feel so strongly that Sure Start matters and must be focused particularly on families that need support at that time. It is also why we have begun a new campaign to support families with multiple problems to ensure that they get the support they need, rather than being passed from one service to another.

We will shortly consult on new proposals for family parental leave, an issue about which I feel strongly. Several hon. Members discussed fathers and the need to involve them more. Involving fathers at an early stage makes a difference to children’s outcomes. If the worst happens—if all the other things we are doing to support relationships do not work and the relationship breaks down—fathers who are engaged at an early stage are much more likely to remain engaged later.

I am running out of time, so I will not be able to speak about all the things that I wanted to address, but I will refer a little to our work on relationship support, which I believe is important to sustaining families who might go through difficult times, as any family will. As the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire said, the Prime Minister recently announced that my Department will fund relationship support to the tune of £30 million, a substantial increase. As part of that, we are also providing funding through a series of voluntary sector organisations—at the moment, telephone and internet services are going out to tender—to ensure that all sorts of relationship support mechanisms are available to families.

The hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire will be pleased to know that we already support prisoners’ families with £1.3 million through about six voluntary sector organisations. I agree that it can have a dramatic impact on reducing reoffending. I have long been interested in the ideas that he mentioned involving greater availability of guidance and support before marriage. Having the skills to negotiate difficult times and knowing where to go for support can make a difference when couples hit rocky periods.

The work we are doing—

[Mr Alan Meale (in the Chair)]

Order. We now move on to our second debate. Can Members who are not going to participate in it please leave quickly and quietly?