Marriage Week

Debate between Catherine McKinnell and David Burrowes

Wednesday 1st February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Burrowes]

The hon. Gentleman and I share views on many issues, not least on how welcome it is that the marriage allowance is once again a transferable allowance. However, that is just a small dent in properly recognising marriage and giving it its true worth and value. That could perhaps be done not least by following the call from many of us, and from the Centre for Social Justice and others, to focus particularly on couples with young children. I would certainly support that.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

Not all marriages last, and external support is often needed when there are difficulties. The Department for Education has said that for every £1 spent on relationship support, the Government save £11.40, yet the Department for Work and Pensions seems to be considering significant cuts in support for face-to-face marriage counselling services. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that would be a terrible mistake?

[Mr Burrowes]

This celebration and debate is not just about putting everyone in a Persil advert of perfect families, where everything goes right. Things go wrong, and resilience is needed. That can come at an early stage through counselling, support or marriage preparation, or after marriage through MOT tests and further support, not least at crucial moments involving young children or debt. Statistics show that the Government spend only 1.6p for every £100 of social harm that is caused by family breakdown. More needs to be done to tackle the associated price tag of £47 billion a year, which is a conservative estimate.

The way in which a marriage plays out in our society should provoke the Government to do all they can to ensure that marriage and the social benefits it affords are accessible to everyone, for richer and for poorer. In 2015, the Marriage Foundation—I very much commend Sir Paul Coleridge, who is here today, and Harry Benson for the great evidence-based work that they have done over the years—found an alarming widening of the marriage gap between rich and poor, with wealthier couples being four times more likely to get married than those from poorer backgrounds. Some 80% of high earners marry, whereas only 24% of low earners do. The rich get married and the poor increasingly do not. That bias in favour of wealthy couples is a social injustice. In fact, to use the words of the former shadow Cabinet Minister for the family—now our Prime Minister—it is a burning injustice, which needs to be tackled by the Government and others. That is vital because marriage supports family stability and provides an important pathway out of poverty.

Marriage must not disappear; in fact, it should be central to Government policy making. I sometimes search Government policy documents on my computer to see where the M-word comes up, but it often does not. There should be family impact statements looking at the impact of marriage and the support it provides in a lot of arenas. The life chances strategy or the social reform strategy, or whatever it will be called, will be published shortly, and I will again search to see where the word “marriage” comes up, because it needs to. If we are tackling burning injustices, we need to support marriage.

I want to spell out some social benefits of marriage. Unmarried parents are six times more likely to break up before their first child’s fifth birthday. Children from broken homes are two-and-a-half times more likely to be in long-term poverty, and 44% of children in lone parent families live in relative poverty—almost twice the figure for children in couple families. Cohabiting couples make up just a fifth of couples with dependent children, but nearly half of all family breakdown. There are a lot of reasons to consider, but marriage is socially just and aids social mobility. Children who experience family breakdown perform less well at school, gain fewer qualifications and are more likely to be expelled from school. I therefore encourage the Government to commit more resources to tackling family breakdown by celebrating marriage.

I welcome the marriage tax allowance. We have mentioned the importance of that; it brings us in line with other OECD countries that have recognised family stability by recognising marriage. However, it is also important to build on that good work. The fact that 90% of a married person’s tax allowance remains transferrable means that although we have that recognition in principle, it does not really get to the heart of the problem.

There are many creative ways of celebrating marriage. As hon. Members have mentioned in their interventions, we can do much more. There is the financial element—we have debated whether that is important in the past—but more than that, it is about practical support and how we provide relationship support. I welcome the previous Prime Minister’s absolute commitment to that and the money that was provided for relationship support, which must continue—indeed, it should increase, because it is money well spent. Supporting fathers, which several hon. Members present have championed through the all-party group on fatherhood, is particularly important, as is broadening access to marriage preparation classes and marriage counselling.

I pay tribute to the Marriage Foundation, which is behind next week’s celebration, and to Harry and Kate Benson, whose life as a couple has recently received a lot of publicity. They recognise that marriage is not just a bed of roses. We all experience problems. Marriage Week is about recognising that we must not take our marriages for granted—we all need to work on them, and that applies to me as much as to anyone else—and nor should society or the Government. We should promote and celebrate this vital institution for a good society.