For those who want a rather less amusing or flippant analysis of the 
Tories' Social Justice Policy Group report on Breakdown Britain than 
that provided by John Veit-Wilson, the 100+ page study can be had at: 
http://povertydebate.typepad.com/home/files/csj_final_2.pdf 

An alternative to John's light-hearted instant analysis of the Report is that of 
Janet Daley's in The Telegraph: 

I have lost count of the zillions of projects and reports and 
think-tank pamphlets that I have assiduously read and fervently 
reported on the breakdown of the traditional married family and its 
direct link with the myriad dysfunctions of the young. What more could 
possibly need to be said? Not only do we have the objective evidence to 
show, beyond any possibility of rational doubt, that the decline of 
marriage has had disastrous consequences for the community, but we can 
demonstrate that successive governments have effectively bribed mothers 
to remain single and keep their children fatherless. 

Now we have another report to say it all again. But I am not blown away 
by optimism. Not that I am disparaging the project. Iain Duncan Smith's 
social justice policy unit has done some splendid work: not only in 
reiterating all that evidence again about how much more likely the 
children of lone parents are to have poor outcomes in terms of 
education, mental health, drug abuse and criminal offending, but also 
in demonstrating how effective local voluntary organisations can be in 
confronting these problems. So no, what I say here is not intended as 
criticism of the Social Justice Foundation that Mr Duncan Smith has led 
with passionate commitment, or of its report. I just cannot, for the 
life of me, think why it is necessary to compile all the data again, 
only to reach the same depressing deduction. Marriage provides the best 
conditions for raising children – OK? It is better than lone parenting 
because two people can cope much more effectively with the staggeringly 
difficult business of raising children properly – OK? Marriage is 
better for children than cohabitation because it is more likely to be 
stable and long lasting: one in two cohabiting couples split up before 
their child's fifth birthday, compared with only one in 12 married 
couples – OK? Seventy per cent of young offenders come from lone-parent 
families; children from broken homes are 70 per cent more likely to 
become drug addicts. OK, OK, OK. We know all this. We have heard it 
over and over and over again. 

For the love of God, when will any political party decide to do what 
needs to be done? It really is not that difficult to produce the 
measures that would begin – at least, begin – to turn this thing 
around. What seems like some irredeemable social breakdown could 
actually be remediable by a number of concrete changes in social 
policy. What is more, I know that there are sensible politicians in 
every party who believe this. The reforms to the tax and benefit system 
that are required are pretty straightforward. We must restore the 
married couple's transferable tax allowance so that a couple can 
benefit from a double personal allowance if one chooses to stay at home 
with children. We must reform the benefit system so that a lone mother 
is not penalised for living with (or marrying) the father of her child. 
We must prevent lone parents from being given priority in the housing 
queue, which means that motherhood instantly promotes a teenage girl 
into domestic and financial independence. 

The great national scandal of our time is not just the deterioration of 
life in our communities but the fact that everybody knows what is at 
the heart of it and no one in power – even those who talk most about 
poverty and know that family breakdown is the chief cause of it – will 
do what must be done. This has been the most shameful failure of 
political and moral courage among the governing classes in living 
memory. Who is going to face down the smug Left-liberal coterie (or 
what remains of it: on this subject, at least, it is losing its nerve) 
and say that marriage must be supported, however many respectable 
people you know who are cohabiting? Who will have the nerve to confront 
the Newsnight presenters who demonstrate the virtue of single 
parenthood by interviewing a blameless middle-class divorcée? Who will 
dare to agree with the obvious truth that Mr Duncan Smith has 
enunciated with rather reckless honesty: that the issue of gay 
partnerships, much loved by the metropolitan media, is an irrelevance 
since the proportion of children raised by gay couples is statistically 
insignificant? Maybe David Cameron's Conservatives (in search of 
substance?) really will make this their central theme. If so, some of 
us will be prepared to forgive them a lot. 

Paul Ashton
[log in to unmask]
2006-12-13