Strengthening Couple Relationships

Gerald Howarth Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

I am most encouraged to see so many of my hon. Friends joining me for this debate this afternoon. It is also good to see some of our friends from Northern Ireland here, too. It is a pity that there is only one Labour Member present, but there we go; I shall not be saying something positive about the Labour party. As you can probably gather from my voice, Mr Streeter, I am suffering from the lurgy that afflicts most of us at this time of year. I was not going to come in, but I was told that the debate would not happen unless I was here and as so many of my hon. Friends want to take part, I was not going to deny them this opportunity.

I also offer a warm welcome to the Minister. He may or may not be aware that, when we announced this debate, we received a call from his Department to ask who should be responsible for replying. I know that the Minister is robust, and I hope that the slight uncertainty between his Department and the Cabinet Office does not reveal some lack of co-ordination in Government on this hugely important issue. Research has consistently shown that stable families are the foundation for a strong society. In 2008, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said that

“there’s nothing more important to families than the strength of their relationships”,

yet the United Kingdom has one of the highest rates of family breakdown in the western world, with less than 70% of children living with both their parents. It is for that reason that I am leading this debate on strengthening couple relationships today.

In 2000, I helped to produce the Family Matters Institute report on the cost of family breakdown, which we then identified was costing this country £30 billion a year. According to the Marriage Foundation, last year that figure had risen to no less than £46 billion, which is more than the entire defence and overseas aid budgets combined and some £1,500 for every single taxpayer. It is a substantial burden. Just yesterday, the Daily Mail carried a two-page spread about a man who has apparently fathered 15 children by six different women, with seven more children by unnamed women, and who is said to have cost the taxpayer in excess of £1 million. One son is a convicted murderer and three others have served jail sentences, all of which cost the taxpayer a further £150,000 a year.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for securing the debate and to his courage in leading it despite his ill health. The doubling of family breakdown over the past 30 years is plainly a huge issue, but there are heroes. I pay tribute to Harry Benson of the Marriage Foundation, who will no doubt be referred to later, for helping to deliver practical support on the ground to help keep couples together. He says:

“We value commitment and faithfulness ever more. But we have lost confidence in marriage. The tide will turn when we realise once more that marriage is the best way to achieve both.”

Does my hon. Friend have any practical proposals to make to the Minister on how to achieve that?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I want to set the scene first, because the problem is of such magnitude that it is important to put the facts on the record. I will admit to him that I am light in the department of what the solutions are, but he will not be surprised to hear that I have some advice for the bishops. I know, however, that my hon. Friends are doing good work in this field.

I was drawing attention to an article in yesterday’s Daily Mail. Some people will say that it refers to an extreme example, which it may be, but it reflects on a smaller scale what is going on right across the nation. I regularly deal with broken family cases at my surgeries. One constituent recently told me that the father of her child walked out the day she went into labour and has not been seen since, although he boasts on Facebook that he has paid hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash for a London flat. Another told me that the father, who smokes a lot of weed, has not seen the children for two years; he has a child by another woman and is now with a third woman. A third constituent told me that she is expecting a child by a man who is not interested and has no job; he himself was placed in care as a child. This is going on all over the country. I am not talking about a deprived inner-city area. This is Aldershot, Hampshire. If it is happening there, imagine what else is happening in some of our inner cities.

The men who father these children seem to have absolutely no interest in bringing them up, let alone paying for them. It is important that we recognise that we cannot afford to continue to subsidise people who live such dysfunctional lifestyles. We do not have the money. It is immoral, it is wrong and it has to stop. Am I being judgmental in an age when such an approach is deemed inappropriate? Of course I am being judgmental. For the sake of our country, we need to be judgmental. Besides, plenty of people never cease to be judgmental about Members of Parliament.

Let me move from the particular to the general. Let us consider the data. According to the Centre for Social Justice—an excellent organisation—more than 3 million children are growing up in a lone parent household, 92% headed by the mother. Does that matter? I submit that it does matter because the evidence shows that

“marriage provides the most reliable framework for raising children.”

Those are not my words, but those of the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), the former Home Secretary, in his 1998 consultation document entitled “Supporting Families”. That view was essentially reiterated by this Government when, in their social justice strategy paper published in March 2012, they said that

“this Government believes marriage often provides an excellent environment in which to bring up children. So the Government is clear that marriage should be supported and encouraged.”

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. His point about dadlessness is important. The lifelong impact on dadless children’s educational achievement and job prospects, among other things, is immense, but does he accept that children sometimes grow up in dadless households because dads who want to be there have been excluded? The purpose of the presumption of shared parenting in the Children and Families Bill, which is going through Parliament now, is to ensure that, wherever possible, those dads who are unable to live with their children because of an acrimonious split continue to have whatever meaningful and valuable contact they have with their children because of the huge value that it brings to the experience of the children.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. It is not one that I intended to cover in my speech, but I am glad that he has put that on the record, because it is clear that there are fathers who do want access to their children and who do want to play an important role in bringing up their children, but they are denied. I hope that the Children and Families Bill will be a move in the right direction to rectify that wrong.

Let me be clear that the problem is not just about the financial cost, massive though that is. As all right hon. and hon. Members are only too aware from their surgeries, there is a massive social cost in human misery, which has an undeniably detrimental effect on children, as my hon. Friend has just illustrated. Statistics show that children of separated parents are more likely to have physical and mental health problems in childhood and to fall into crime or substance abuse in later life. The Centre for Social Justice observes that lone parents are two and a half times more likely to be in poverty than couple families, and children from broken homes are statistically less likely to be able to establish stable relationships themselves, thereby continuing the cycle.

Research by the Office for National Statistics on “The mental health of children and adolescents in Great Britain”, published in 2000, found twice the incidence of disorders in boys aged 11 to 15 in lone-parent households as in married households. Even more interesting, the incidence in cohabiting households was similar not to that in married households, but rather to that in lone-parent households. I shall have more to say on cohabitation in a moment, but clearly one has to recognise that although not all children brought up in such conditions will necessarily struggle in those ways, we cannot ignore the facts if we are to tackle the issue. According to Relate, another excellent organisation, the number of families with dependent children increased by 5% between 1996 and 2012. The number of married-couple families with dependent children fell by 12%, however, and the number of lone-parent families rose by 22% and the number of cohabiting couples doubled. One million fathers do not live with their children.

Marriage, which for the majority of Conservative Members of Parliament can be only between a man and a woman, remains the core of a stable family. Only in this environment do children have both male and female role models for guidance and support. However, the number of marriages has fallen from about 415,000 in 1970 to about 240,000 in 2010, a near 100-year low. The number of single-parent households has risen from 8% of the total in 1970 to 22% in 2010. Since the late 1970s, there has been a steady increase in the rise of cohabitation, with nearly half of all children today born outside marriage, but cohabitation is a relatively unstable substitute for marriage. Figures from the Centre for Social Justice show that fewer than one in 10 married couples separate by their child’s fifth birthday, compared with one in three cohabiting couples.

Many of us welcomed the Government’s acknowledgement of the contribution that marriage makes to a strong society when the Chancellor included a tax break for married couples in his autumn statement. At this point, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who led the campaign on that front, but it can only be the start. I agree wholeheartedly with the Christian Institute that

“most marriages last for life… Children need a father and a mother to nurture them... Children need parents who love them and love each other just as much. That love must be a permanent and not a temporary commitment… The best environment for raising children is marriage because the spouses have committed themselves to each other, and thus their children, for life. No other kind of relationship provides this environment of stability and permanence for children. Social science confirms that lifelong and loving marriage is the ideal context in which to raise children.”

Some say that in a free society, people should be entitled to live any lifestyle that they want and to an extent that is unquestionably true. I am conscious that I am trespassing on delicate territory, as we are all touched in one way or another by such trends, even at the highest levels in our land, but overwhelmingly it is the taxpayer who is picking up the tab for the current state of affairs, so the state cannot be an idle bystander.

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. His comments thus far have rightly centred on the importance for children of having a stable family background, but does he also agree that marriage is important for looking after more elderly family members as well, and increasingly so? My own family has had experience of this. People need a solid family life to look after elderly parents or grandparents who might need care, even if not at a level that requires them to go into a home.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I could not agree more. My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point—one that is not often made but needs to be, particularly as our elderly population continues to grow. The importance of families sustaining that elderly generation will increase. My own children never cease to remind me that I need to be kind and generous to them, because they will be choosing my old folks’ home. I do not know quite what they mean, but there we go.

The statistics I have quoted provide sound reasons why the state should encourage marriage. International studies have found that couple counselling has been effective in improving the quality of relationships. Relationship guidance and support from organisations such as Relate should be at couples’ disposal. I am pleased that the Government have pledged £30 million to support these initiatives, although I understand that only 2% of those eligible are able to access the facilities, because of a lack of resources. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) has been doing hugely important work in the field of providing counselling to those whose relationships are in difficulty.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that those who wish to stay at home, whether the father or the mother, should be encouraged to do so, if that is what they wish? Government policy should not push them out.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

Again, I agree with my hon. Friend. Our friends always say how nice our children are, and perhaps it is all down to me, but actually it is not; it is down to my wife, because she gave up her job and spent the early years of our children’s lives looking after them. At dinner parties, people would say to my wife, “What do you do?” and she would say that she looked after the children, to which they would reply, “Oh, so you don’t do anything else.” Well, seeing all of my hon. Friends here who are male—[Interruption.] They are not all male, but many are, although sitting in front of me is my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham), the mother of three children. Those men who have been asked to look after our children in the way that mothers do find it extremely demanding. The idea of the full-time mother staying at home has been belittled for far too long and the role should be properly recognised.

Many others beyond Relate seek to provide support to those whose relationships are challenged, and I salute all of them. The churches individually do a tremendous job in seeking to heal the wounds, but I wish that the bishops would be more vocal in their condemnation of dysfunctional lifestyles. Like the Bishop of Manchester, they seem to have no shortage of views on the iniquity of the Chancellor’s proposals on welfare, despite the overwhelming public support for them, but they seem reluctant to pronounce on the value and the virtue of fidelity.

I have been much encouraged by reading about Sir Paul Coleridge, a High Court judge who seems to have been eased out of his place for having trenchant and principled views on the importance of traditional marriage. He recently warned of the “yawning public ignorance” about the mental effects on children of conflict between parents, even from birth. He believes that the Government have spent too much time pushing through the same-sex marriage legislation rather than tackling a crisis of family breakdown.

The cost to the taxpayer, the cost in human misery and the damage to children serve to prove why it is time that Parliament took the issue more seriously. I hope that the Government will push it much higher up the agenda than they have been able to do up until now.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) has done the House a great service in ensuring that we have this debate. It is such an important debate that it is a matter of regret that we are having it in Back-Bench time in Westminster Hall.

The effects of marital breakdown on society are enormous. It is a modern plague and it is causing not just expense but misery. We have to speak up about it all the time, because there is almost a conspiracy of silence about such issues. Over the past 50 years, a view has grown in our permissive society that people are happiest if they are completely liberated and can do what they want and say, “It is about me.” The Churches, successive Governments, schools, the BBC, national newspapers and we as Members of Parliament are all complicit in that permissive view of society, which has left a trail of despair in its wake.

Sir Paul Coleridge, the family division judge, has been mentioned. He is one of the very few people who have had the courage to speak about this matter. He deals with these issues every day of his working life. He warns of the “yawning public ignorance” of the mental effects on children of conflict between parents, even from birth. He is either retired or about to retire, and The Daily Telegraph said that he

“decided to step down because of opposition from within the judiciary to his support for traditional marriage. He has been placed under investigation and could be officially censured over comments last year criticising the Government for pushing through same-sex marriage legislation rather than tackling a ‘crisis of family breakdown’.”

He is a man who knows what is going on and he should be listened to.

I am grateful to the Library for its work on the briefing papers, but I do not want to quote a load of statistics, because we all know the truth. It is absolutely clear what is going on and there is no argument about it. The decline of traditional marriage has been an unalloyed disaster. People in government, in schools and in Churches are frightened of speaking out about this issue. They think that if they say they support traditional marriage, they are somehow criticising people who are not married or who, for all sorts of reasons that are not their fault, are no longer married, but that is not the case. Surely we can value everyone in society and how they live, while speaking out for what is right in society, which is marriage and people setting out to stay married if they want to bring up children.

Again, we are indebted to the Library for telling us what is going on. These are all statistics and facts. They are not made up by people who come here with a particular point of view. A story in The Daily Telegraph on a National Centre for Social Research study said:

“One in eight divorced or separated fathers has lost all contact with their children”.

Is that not dreadful? Is that not sad?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

It is tragic.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Indeed. One in eight divorced or separated fathers do not see their children at all. The Daily Telegraph story continues:

“Almost a million men in the UK are estimated to have dependent children with whom they do not live. Almost 130,000 of them have no contact at all with their children.”

A story in The Daily Telegraph on the British social attitudes survey said:

“The belief that couples should ideally get married before starting a family has effectively collapsed within a generation, the British Social Attitudes survey, the longest running and most authoritative barometer of public opinion in the UK, shows.

Only a minority of people now view marriage as the starting point for bringing up children, with support for that view almost halving in less than 25 years.”

Do we not have a responsibility for the change in social attitudes? We are told, “Britain has changed. You have to accept it,” but do we not have a right to speak up for what is right?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

My hon. Friend is making a passionate speech. He asks why Churches and schools do not recognise what many people say is the bleeding obvious, which is backed up by all the statistics. It is true that the previous Government had a good document supporting families, and the present Government have one. However, they do not give effect to the means by which we can strengthen marriage and those relationships, and send a clarion call out to people: “This is the way to lead your life—if you want a fulfilled life, you are more likely to have it through this means.”

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The Government are making one effort. They have said that they will bring in a transferable allowance for married couples. It is a matter of regret and has already been noted that the Labour party spokesman is here alone. Fair enough—he will speak in a moment; but it is a matter of regret that the Labour party has continually laughed at the proposal from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Labour viewpoint is “This is rubbish and will not make any difference.” The fact is that if one member—usually the mother—of a married couple who are doing their best to bring up children decides to stay at home, they are uniquely disadvantaged by the tax and benefits system.

There are six key arguments that drive a coach and horses through the arguments against the transferable allowance. First, the UK is out of line with international convention in not recognising marriage in its tax system. We are virtually alone of all big countries. One-earner married couples—those who would benefit from a transferable allowance—are thereby at a serious disadvantage relative to comparable families. The second is the distributional argument: introducing a transferable allowance for married couples will disproportionately benefit those in the lower half of the income distribution. In that way, it is quite unlike the coalition policy of increasing the personal income tax threshold to £10,000.

The third argument is about the married couples allowance, which was dismissed by some as something of an anomaly, but which played a key role in sustaining one-earner families. The fourth argument is that a transferable allowance would help to make work more rewarding for many of the poorest in society. The fifth is that transferable allowances should be introduced as soon as possible to compensate for the attack on one-earner families resulting from the introduction of a higher-income child benefit charge. The sixth and final argument is the stay-at-home spouse argument; most one-earner families do not have the option of becoming two-earner couple families.

The Government are at least doing one small thing. It will not, on its own, persuade anyone to get married or stay married; but at last we have a statement. That is what we want today from the Minister—and from the Prime Minister and all Ministers. We want them to have the courage to stand up for traditional marriage. That is not just because the current situation is a modern plague that costs us £46 billion a year—it is not just about the cost. The point is the human misery that comes in its wake. That is why the debate is so important.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) on securing the debate, and I thank all those who contributed. There have been some very interesting points made.

I was particularly keen on some of the practical suggestions made by the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), who is the chair of the all-party group on strengthening couple relationships, as he said. Looking at the group’s minutes, I was struck by some of the issues identified, especially by Dr Lester Coleman of the OnePlusOne charity. He emphasised that those who are more engaged at work enjoy a better quality of relationship. That may be because they are more personally fulfilled and more secure in their personal identity, and therefore are better able to give and share. That would seem to be an argument for making it easier for those who wish to work to do so, and is perhaps also an argument for supporting child care, which is a very important part of the Labour party’s policy, especially at a time when the cost of child care is rising so dramatically.

Apparently, parents, as opposed to non-parents, also experience better-quality relationships, and although I would be the first to accept that many contented couples do not have children, that finding suggests to me that we may need to do all we can to support those who wish to be parents. That might include measures such as those that the Government have embarked on to improve adoption. It might mean working harder to broaden the range of people who can adopt and foster. In some cases, it might mean making fertility treatment available to more couples on the NHS.

I also understand that Dr Coleman says that where there is greater work-family conflict, that can have quite a negative impact on the quality of relationships. Of course, that brings to mind all the arguments about making work flexible, so that it fits in with families, and the issue of the living wage, which we comment on from time to time. I am not sure that all of that has received enough attention in the debate so far.

It is perhaps also worth noting that in the YouGov survey commissioned by Relate, to which the hon. Member for Aldershot referred, 59% of respondents were concerned about the strain that money worries were placing on their relationship, which of course is one reason why we on this side of the House take so much time to emphasise the problems of the cost of living at the moment.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

Who is “we”?

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Steve McCabe]

I think that I can speak for my side of the House, Mr Streeter. When it comes to strengthening couple relationships, the hon. Member for Aldershot has been clear. He is talking about heterosexual couples. We learned about his views on this issue during the debate on same-sex marriage. He has repeated them honestly today in this debate and in his ePolitix article, in which he states that marriage

“for the majority of Conservative MPs can only be between a man and a woman”.

I do not think that in this day and age it is possible to make such a narrow distinction, because whatever the views of individuals, the law and society are clear: “couple relationships” can mean married, cohabiting, heterosexual and homosexual relationships, however difficult that is for some people to accept. I acknowledge that many people put great store by traditional marriage, but that does not mean that we can deny the reality of what we see around us.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

What the hon. Gentleman has heard throughout this debate, though, is that all the evidence has shown that cohabiting couple households—I am referring to the statistics relating to family disorder, the breakdown of family life and so on—are much more akin to single-parent households than to married couple households. No one is saying that people have to live that lifestyle, but the facts suggest to us that there is one lifestyle in this country that is likely to produce a happier outcome and is better for children, and that is marriage. His right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), a former Secretary of State for the Home Department, said that himself, so why cannot the hon. Gentleman accept it?

[Steve McCabe]

As a divorcé, I do not feel that my divorce has prevented me from being able to have a further solid relationship; nor has it prevented me from having a strong parental role or from being part of a family.

It is interesting that the Government’s most explicit policy to support marriage, the married couple’s tax allowance—we heard quite a lot about that from the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh)—is available only to one third of married couples. The proposals are really designed for the situation in which one partner does not work outside the home or earns very little. It is really a policy for stay-at-home mums, which is perhaps slightly at odds with some of Dr Coleman’s suggestions. Of course, it is available only for married mums, not for widows, cohabiting mums or anyone like that. Perhaps most astonishingly of all, it is available for the love rat who deserts his wife and family and runs off with someone else’s wife. He can remarry and claim the allowance. That strikes me as a slightly perverse way of strengthening couple relationships.

The other thing that is slightly strange about the policy is that it applies to only 4 million of the 12.3 million married couples, and it is not clear what impact it will have on children, given that pensioner families make up more than one third of the beneficiaries. In fact, only 35% of the 30% of families who gain from the policy have children, and only 17% have children under the age of five. It is hardly a well targeted policy if its aim is to support the concerns raised by the hon. Gentleman.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Timpson]

As the Minister with responsibility for children and families, I have sympathy with the need to raise the issue across Government and to ensure that all Departments play an active role in establishing what works and delivering it, but as my hon. Friend will acknowledge, I am not in a position to start appointing new Ministers or Departments. Forums are available to bring the topic together across Government; in particular, the social justice committee, which is chaired by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, has a strong interest in the subject and is well placed to hold such cross-government discussions.

We are doing a significant amount to support families but we must recognise that, sadly, parents separate. When that happens, it can be a difficult time in which families need support on a range of issues. That is why we are improving the information, advice and support available to separated parents outside the court system to help them focus on their children’s needs and to agree workable arrangements for post-separation parenting. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) rightly said, the Children and Families Bill, which is currently in the other place, includes provision to highlight the importance of a child having a relationship with both parents following family breakdown, provided that to do so is safe and in the child’s best interests. The welfare of the individual child must be the court’s paramount consideration, but, subject to that, the parental involvement clause requires courts to presume that the child’s welfare is furthered by the involvement of each parent who can be safely involved. By making clear the basis on which the court makes those decisions, that provision is intended to encourage parents to reach agreement themselves about their child’s care without recourse to the court.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

Before my hon. Friend the Minister sits down, may I thank him for the serious attention that he is paying to the issue? We hope that we can support him in raising it up the Government’s agenda. Before we conclude, may I also thank you, Mr Streeter, for all that you have done in this field?

[Mr Timpson]

It is remiss of me not to have directed similar praise to you, Mr Streeter, and I concur with the words that have just come in your direction.

The Government have commissioned two key pieces of work that will inform future policy makers and commissioners, because problems often start with poor commissioning decisions. That will help in areas such as Mid Derbyshire that want to move away from short-term, spot-purchasing solutions towards something more sustainable. Those two key pieces of work are an independent evaluation of relationship support interventions and a cross-government review of the family stability indicator of the social justice strategy.

Although significant evidence points to the importance of the quality of adult couple relationships to child outcomes, we know from various reviews of literature that there is limited evidence from within the UK about which relationship support practice has the most positive impact on adult and child outcomes. My Department has consequently commissioned research to test the effectiveness of several relationship support interventions, some of which we have already heard about—“Let’s Stick Together”, which my hon. Friends the Members for Congleton and for South West Bedfordshire have mentioned, as well as marriage preparation and couple counselling—to evaluate whether they are as effective as we would like. That report is due at the end of the month.