Fatherhood and the Care of Children
5th July 2005
Nick Hurd raises his concerns that the perceived breakdown in community values and respect is related to the way children are being brought up.
Mr. Nick Hurd (Ruislip-Northwood) (Con): I am grateful to you, Mr. Olner, for squeezing me in. This important debate goes to the heart of a growing concern in my constituency about the perceived breakdown in the values that once bound the community together-respect for the law, respect for property and respect for each other.
A growing voice has linked that breakdown with the way in which children are being brought up today. It is not just the voice of nostalgia for a golden age of parenthood that probably never existed. I have spoken with senior London policemen who have to deal with the fact that 40 per cent. of street crime in London is committed by 10 to 16-year-olds playing truant. I have spoken with the headmasters of secondary schools who often find parents who obstruct rather than support their efforts to instil more discipline in their schools. A growing body of research summarises the evidence of family breakdown in Britain and its harmful impact on children.
It is striking how out on a limb we are. Britain is the divorce capital of Europe, with 25 per cent. of children living in lone-parent households. That is twice the European average as measured by EUROSTAT, and the trend shows no sign of slowing. The Government's approach has been to respect personal freedom and to help those facing the challenge of bringing up children on their own in conditions of poverty by providing them with support. Those good intentions are to be supported-they are thoroughly respectable-but I would argue that they have unintended but damaging consequences.
I would like to pick up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb), which is that the tax and benefits system now discourages low-earning parents from forming two-parent families. That message comes through strongly in research from a wide range of organisations, including Civitas, Care, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Centre for Policy Studies. It is the inevitable outcome of a system in which income tax is based on individual assessment, with no allowances for marriage, and benefits are based on a joint assessment; arguably, penalties for marriage are built in to the system.
If that is true, Government policy may be helping to increase the number of children being raised without a father in the home, despite increasingly clear evidence that there is a link between marriage or stable cohabitation and a better outcome for children in terms of health, performance at school and crime. That being so, is it not time to confront the awkward truth that children growing up outside the family unit do not have equality of opportunity? Is it not time to re-examine where the interests of children lie and ask whether it can be in their interests to penalise couples and subsidise lone parents? Faced with the growing tension between the need to respect personal freedom and the desire to give children the best possible chance, I argue that the Government should at least be neutral in the signals that they send via the tax and benefits system.
I was canvassing on an estate in Ruislip during the general election when I was pursued down the street by a young man in a dressing gown. He wanted to tell me that his decision to marry his girlfriend would cost him £400 in lost benefit. He was going to do it anyway, because he thought that it was the right thing to do-but he wanted to know whether it was wrong for the Government to be sending that signal to young people. I said yes-and I would be interested to hear the Minister's response.
12.4 pm
For full debate as reported in Hansard, click here.
