Love Matters (Archbishops’ Commission on Families and Households Report)

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Friday 8th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I am pleased to rise broadly to support what I consider to be the main thrust of the report commissioned by the most reverend Primates. I am not a good sleeper. Last week, I was awake at 3.30 am and decided to grab the iPad and read Love Matters. My first thought, if I am being honest, is that it sounded like the title of a book your parents might hide in their bedroom. I also hoped it would be a cure for insomnia, but how wrong I was on both counts. I found it to be a lucid, challenging and compelling read—I was still there at 6 am. From the most reverend Primates’ foreword onwards, it was quietly explosive. It was not that it was saying things that we did not know; in fact, that was perhaps a disappointment. The facts and data in all the chapters are known to us. I am sure there are clearly some omissions, as noble Lords will point out, but the report made a readable narrative of those facts. It was not the interpretation of the facts because they too are also known to us—for example, that poor housing leads to poor outcomes, to name but one. It was the fact that we were challenged to look at the solutions to those known facts as problems through what I call the love lens.

The definition of love as explained by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury within the biblical and religious context is used a lot in the report, which makes it very different from any normal public policy document. Its fundamental tenet is that families matter, relationships matter and love matters if individuals are to flourish, and I agree. It explains and expands the concept of “family-ness” support. It completely rewrites the definition of “family”, which some would and have taken issue with, and yet we would all surely recognise that love and meaningful relationships come in many different guises and that all are valid and valuable, but it is important to remember that it is still obviously pretty controversial.

Yet, when we actually know people in those many and varied relationships, we can see that they often work in spite of our prejudices. That is perhaps because of the presence of something that is difficult to define, which I have called “the something else”, and the report bravely attempts to do just that. It accepts the fact of diversity as the lived experience in the 21st century and goes beyond it to seek commonality and define that “something else”. The 12 independent commission members distilled down the essence of what makes those families work and what they need to flourish from what they saw and heard, rather than judging and proselytising a set position of what a family is and how it should function.

From that point of view of the Church, it is a brave, bold and challenging report. Its messages have been hard for some Christians to hear, and probably those of other faiths too, because it is explicit that, while being part of a family is central to our existence as human beings, we should recognise and value the diversity of families and households and, much more significantly, reflect that more honestly in policy-making. We should seek to create solutions that build relationship capability and resilience. That is perhaps easier said than done, but the report tries to pin it down to practical and tangible recommendations.

I felt that the report reflected reality, pulling together the many threads that affect families and bind us together as a society. It exposed that in parts those threads are wearing thin and in others they are snapping —indeed, that there are many holes in the social fabric of life. There are many sensible, proactive recommendations, such as more support for couples getting married or partnered, or making decisions about having children or separation. These are crucial life decisions that are often traumatic for children, but all too often support is missing; it is just not there. It is patchy at best and certainly is not being promoted as “what you do”. The report lays bare the inadequacy of the support given to families as they make these big life decisions, which have such an impact on many lives and, ultimately, on society as a whole. There is a huge cost to failure.

The blueprint for success in relationships is not in a formula such as “one man plus one woman plus marriage—preferably in church—plus children equals happily ever after”. We know that, for many, that formula is not an end in itself. For me, it is what makes loving and stable relationships that is more important. I agree with Philip Larkin, from personal experience.

The report takes us on a journey and challenges us that if we use the family lens test to view policy then it might just produce better outcomes, because it is certain that if we do what we always do then we will get what we always get. For me, the real challenge that was missing from the report is: how do you start to demonstrate that family is at the heart of policy? What does that look and feel like, whether you are sitting in a council chamber, in here or in a Select Committee? How do you start to make policy in that way? It certainly feels a long way from how we do things now, although the report is helpfully peppered with good practice from different parts of the country.

To me, it seems that faith can sometimes be very harsh and judgmental about how people live their lives, and that banishes them from churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples because they know they cannot live up to those ideals. This just is not real life to them; it is excluding and judgmental. Worse still, it is responsible for mountains of guilt that individuals feel, which is damaging to their mental health and well-being. Perhaps the real challenge for us all is how to demonstrate that love matters in a world where the word is overused and trivialised to the extent where it is devoid of meaning. It strikes me that the report holds challenges for all of us but also for the Church itself, which the report does not shy away from.

I end on a lighter and more hopeful note—as, indeed, the report ends, with “Reimagining the Future”. The report references the Australian soap “Neighbours” as an example of what happens when neighbours become good friends. I suggest that we have an equally good British example in “Coronation Street”. I challenge noble Lords to watch the episode from Wednesday 6 December, where they will see everything that the report evidences as a snapshot of modern life, albeit condensed into one street. In fact, I vouch that we could use that episode alone to conduct a meaningful session on building relationship capacity, community resilience and that “something else” that is gently at work in the actions of its many characters—but, being a northerner, I would say that, wouldn’t I?