Welfare: Cost of Family Breakdown

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Tuesday 4th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, on the issue of food banks raised by the noble Baroness, which we have discussed several times in this House, clearly nobody goes to a food bank willingly. However, it is very hard to know why people go to them. The Defra report said that there was a lack of systematic peer-reviewed research from the UK on the reasons or immediate circumstances that lead people to turn to food aid.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

Is the Minister aware that cohabiting relationships form a disproportionate amount of the relationships that break down and that cohabiting parents are three times as likely to split by the time their child is aged five as are married couples? Will the Government therefore refrain from further normalising or approving cohabiting relationships as a form of parenthood?

[Lord Freud]

There was a very substantial long-term jump in the number of cohabiting relationships. It went up over the last Government from more than 600,000 to 1.1 million. It is somewhat flattening now; it currently stands at 1.2 million. The noble Baroness is right in that the actual figure is that those couples are four times more likely to split when their child is under three than if they are married. However, there are some structural and major societal changes behind those trends, and it will take an enormous amount of effort to start putting marriage back into its rightful place. That is exactly one of the things that we are looking to do with the family stability review.