Cross-departmental Strategy on Social Justice

Steve Double Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing a debate on such an important issue.

I am sure that many of us were very encouraged to hear the new Prime Minister state clearly that social justice will be at the heart of her Government, continuing the excellent work of the former Prime Minister, David Cameron, and that the Government’s agenda will be focused clearly on addressing not just the symptoms but the causes of poverty. In its report, “Breakthrough Britain”, the Centre for Social Justice identified five pathways or causes of poverty in the UK. Those were family breakdown, educational failure, addiction, debt and worklessness. I am delighted at the way the Government have for some time now sought to address those issues by, as we have heard, creating jobs and getting more people into jobs than ever before—there are far fewer workless households—and by reforming education and raising standards of education in schools.

I particularly want to focus on the place of family. Unless we address the matter of family breakdown, we will never truly address the issue of poverty and social justice. We need to put family at the heart of any agenda.

--- Later in debate ---

On resuming—

[Steve Double]

To pick up where I left off, there is clear evidence that we will never truly deal with the issue of social justice and social mobility if we do not put family at the heart of any agenda. Research conducted by the Centre for Social Justice has shown that children who experience family breakdown perform less well at school, gain fewer qualifications and are more likely to be expelled. Helping families to stay together is the ultimate social mobility agenda.

While it is not just about money—we must remember that these are real people’s lives at the heart of this—we cannot ignore the cost of family breakdown. Family breakdown is estimated to cost the country £48 billion a year, with £7 billion on the health service, £4.5 billion on the police and £13.1 billion on increased tax credits. That is in addition to the pressure it puts on our housing stock and social services. Despite that massive cost to the taxpayer and the pressure that family breakdown places on our national services, next year the Government will spend more on repairing cathedrals than they will on supporting relationships and families staying together. If this Government are really to build a one nation Britain, their social reforms will have to work to close the family gap, because the benefits of a stable family life are not shared equally and are becoming a middle-class preserve.

I know these are generalisations, and people will always point to exceptions, but the latest Government data show that 76% of children in middle to high-income households are living with both parents, compared with only 48% of those in low-income families. It is clear that family breakdown is damaging the life chances of the poorest children in our country, and it should be a matter of social justice. I am aware that social justice is easy to talk about and much more difficult to achieve, but we do need to talk about it. I say that as someone who has learned the hard way how important family is. We should not shy away from saying that strong families, strong marriages and couple relationships are a good thing, because the evidence is there to clearly demonstrate that that is the case.

Too often, successive Governments have kicked this issue into the long grass or put in the “too difficult to deal with” pile. I do not believe we can afford to do that any longer. If we do not take steps and put measures in place that will actively support couples and families and reverse the trend of family breakdown in this country, we will fail future generations of our poorest children.

The title of this debate is “Cross-departmental strategy on social justice”. If we are to have such a strategy, we will need a cross-departmental strategy on the family. In my time in this House, it has struck me that family policy is not really owned by any Department or Minister. While it is true that family matters cut across many Departments, they are too vital to the life chances of millions of children across our country to not be owned by anyone in government. Because family matters are often seen as difficult, intangible and hard to address, there is a real danger that they end up falling between all the stools.

I believe that the Government need to do more. I support the proposal by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton that children’s centres be converted to family hubs as a first step. I also call on the Government to extend the married couples transferable tax allowance further and to continue to eradicate the couple penalty in the welfare system, so that it is no longer a disincentive for couples to stay together.

We need someone in the Cabinet who will champion the family. We need cross-departmental co-operation to develop family-friendly policies and a family test with real teeth that shapes policy. We need the Government to not be afraid to boldly say that strong families, marriages and couple relationships are good. They are good for our children and for our national wellbeing, and they will play a key role in dealing with the causes of poverty across our country.