Welfare: Cost of Family Breakdown

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 4th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister have a breakdown of the amount of funding that the Government give to those charities that help families in difficulty to prevent the partnership breaking down? Can he say whether there is a role for the Family Nurse Partnership in helping families stay together?

[Lord Freud]

We are running two immediate programmes. The first is to provide help and support for separated families, running in SR10 at £14 million, £10 million of which is spent on an innovation fund that tests various interventions, involving 17 different voluntary and private groups. The other aspect is the relationship support interventions, on which we are spending £30 million. There are three main areas—something called Let’s Stick Together, marriage preparation and couples counselling.