Family Policy

HC Deb 17 December 1982 vol 34 cc586-643 9.37 am

Mr. Peter Bottomley (Woolwich, West)

I beg to move, That this House recognises the role and influence of families in promoting health, education, behaviour and employment prospects; believes that public policy can be further developed to improve family functioning; notes the impact of public decisions on the needs and resources of families; and believes that measures to reduce avoidable disadvantage, distress and handicap should take account of the family perspective. It is well known that I am a great believer in bringing the family into politics. It is also well known that the House has, during the years, brought forward many important measures that have helped families. My argument today is not only that the House could do more and that the Government could bring in the family perspective to all their social and economic measures, but that people outside should recognise that the House of Commons can focus on the interests of families to help them to function more effectively and to carry out their duties and responsibilities within an environment that gives them support.

There has been much talk in recent years about how the family is not what it used to be. I do not believe that the family ever was "what it used to be". In general, matters have improved in many areas. There has been a dramatic and welcome improvement in the prevention of perinatal mortality during the past three to four years. However, as the House will recall from our recent debate on the Black report, the differential statistics between different social classes and different areas of the country demonstrate that we still have much more to do.

If I refer at times to two organisations, I hope that the House will understand my interest in their work. First, Family Forum is an association of nearly 100 voluntary bodies which have come together to promote the interests of families. Secondly, there is the Study Commission on the Family. It is to be hoped that over the next few months it will transform itself into a successor body and will continue to undertake research and the assembling of information so that we in the House and those outside are better informed.

I shall quote from the most recent booklet to be produced by the Study Commission on the Family, which is entitled "Values and the Changing Family". It states: Most contemporary accounts of the family emphasise change and, consequently, an increasing diversity in family patterns. In this account, however, we start by emphasising continuity in family life and only turn to changes later. For the fact is that most young people in Britain will get married; most marriages will survive; most married couples will have children; most children will be born legitimate and be brought up by two parents. Indeed none in every ten children are still born within marriage and seven out of eight are living in two parent families. That shows that we should keep a sense of perspective when trying to deal with families which find that their own circumstances are not those that they would wish—they are often not those that we would wish—that we should try to ensure that we avoid hysteria or the temptation of saying that we must impose, or people must impose on themselves, unrealistic expectations, and that we should not allow ourselves to accept that the upset of normal family patterns is the only answer to some of our pressing problems.

When I talk of family well-being, I am concerned as much with well-being among families, who are disadvantaged, whether through no fault of their own or through some contribution that they themselves may have made, as among families which appear to be in the best of physical, mental and financial health. There is an enormous danger in a debate of this sort to forget about those who often can give us the best advice on what living in this society is actually about. These are families which have had the experience of having children taken into care or have faced the problem of trying to find work for their teenagers when they have not been able to find work for themselves for many years. Often these families are struggling in the poverty trap or at a level at which the social services and other statutory services feel that they cannot cope. Such families can contribute as much to this debate as most of us, and probably more.

A recent publication by ATD Fourth World called "An End to Injustice" has a valuable table of contents at the end which helps to focus some of our attention on the things that matter to families who, I think, would not mind being described as occupying a place at the bottom end of the opportunities in our society. I shall read out a list of the chapters: We've Been Left in Misery; It's a disgrace; Where does all that get us?; The recession makes it worse; Nobody taught me; You may not starve but you can't live either; You see how far misery can lead; People don't believe in us; they always condemn us; They think we don't want to work; The past is always held against you; They call me an unfit mother; It's not right to label people; People say we are no use; They shouldn't condemn us. The list continues. Those words, which were taken from families themselves, help to describe the impact that social arrangements, and often our own attitudes, have on people whose ambitions are the same as ours but who lack many of the opportunities to match their actions with their ambitions.

Four and a half years ago I introduced a fairly similar debate, during which I was able to show that there is little literature on the family perspective and the family life circle. I said then that the House and the Government in general tend to regard society as if it were a still photograph in which there is an apparently unchanging group of the elderly in one corner, families looking after children in another and the unemployed and those caring for the handicapped, for example, in another.

In that earlier debate I talked about the importance of introducing the idea of a moving picture and to understand how people's needs and resources alter as they go through life. The pattern is not always predictable but it is predictable that a significant number will pass through any given circumstance. Our problem is that we have not managed to take into account sufficiently in public policy the impact of what families themselve do; what they are able to do at an early stage in their life and the consequences in future. Perhaps even more importantly for the House, we have not managed sufficiently to encourage Government to do what is possible and what is right in adjusting many of the interventions that they make.

I shall give a small financial example. If we gathered together 12 senior civil servants who advise Ministers and asked them how many were benefiting from child benefit, the answer would probably be about 25 per cent. If we asked how many were benefiting from mortgage interest relief by increasing the size of their mortgage and thereby getting greater effective financial help as their income increased and they moved into higher rates of tax, the answer would probably be about 75 per cent. It is not very surprising that if the same attitudes apply to Ministers and the electorate as a whole, it is rather easier for the Government to hold down the level of child benefit than to hold down the value of mortgage interest relief.

If we want to see help concentrated at the most effective and important time in terms of financial resources, it is clear that the time to do so is at family formation, in terms both of housing help and of family income support—in other words, child benefit.

I cast the mind of the House back to 1940 when Eleanor Rathbone, who was then a Member of Parliament, produced her book entitled "The Case for Family Allowances". She wrote: Children are not simply a private luxury. They are an asset to the community and the community can no longer afford to leave the provision for their welfare solely to the accident of individual income. Eleanor Rathbone was elected to the House in 1929. For most of the time she was campaigning with the mother of my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir B. RhysWilliams), and probably with his grandmother as well. People said that it was not possible to do what she wanted. However, it was perfectly all right for the Civil Service and the Armed Forces to provide family allowances, and it was all right for one or two enlightened employers in the private sector to do the same. It was considered that it would have been an unwarranted intervention by the Government to do the same.

The problem between the wars was that the trade union movement in general was not convinced that an increase in child benefit, which was then known by a different name, was wise. With one or two honourable exceptions the trade union movement believed that an increase in child benefit would lead to a reduction in wages. Perhaps that was a rather greater real fear in those days between the wars when there were reductions in wages.

I am sorry to say that the trade union movement generally is still not campaigning strongly for an increase in child benefit, although there are honourable exceptions. Douglas Grieve has been a member of the executive of Family Forum. He is the general secretary of the Tobacco Workers Union and a member of the General Council of the TUC. He bravely and wisely wrote an article on family policy that appeared in the New Statesman a year ago. He said that the idea of a family wage was a myth, had been a myth and would probably remain a myth.

There were exceptions between the wars. Eleanor Rathbone quoted the late William Straker, former secretary of the Northumberland Miners' Federation. He said that the British working man is probably the most conservative man among the nations of Europe and so is apt to stick to old methods long after they have served their day. He added that the British man might be trusted to get there in the end. He went on: Marriage is according to nature's plan. When circumstances are such as to prevent men and women from entering the married state they are denied life's greatest joys. A scheme of this kind"— —that is, family allowances— in many cases, would change these preventive circumstances. When, in spite of untoward circumstances, the married state is entered upon, the consequent burden would be lightened and life made brighter. Children would be better fed, better clothed, better housed, and better educated under a scheme of this kind. Can anyone doubt that a better manhood and womanhood would be produced, and a better world created? Since the family allowance was introduced at the end of the war, shortly before the 1945 election, we have seen the combined value of child tax allowances and family allowances reduced. Over the past 28 years the value of the old age pension in real terms has just about doubled. The value of average earnings has roughly doubled. The cobined value of child income support has gone down in real terms by about 30 per cent. Any analysis of what the experts call equivalised family income, when one tries to match needs and resources, will show that when people do not have dependants, especially children, to care for, they have a substantially higher standard of living.

Many years ago, families were expected to care financially for their elderly. We have introduced pension schemes and the State retirement pension, and we are moving towards the maturity of the second pension scheme. It is fair to say that in purely financial terms the burden of caring for the elderly does not fall on families. However, families have a burden when they are caring for children, especially at the early stages of family formation when the family may move from two incomes and two mouths to feed to one income and three mouths to feed.

The second time when there are pressures is when there are teenage children, who are generally accepted as being more expensive to care for than pensioners, yet the family income support is lower. I have put the case, together with Family Forum, to the Sub-Committee of the Select Committee on the Treasury and Civil Service and to the Government that they should consider issuing a Green Paper on the impact of tax and benefits over the family life cycle. I hope that I shall be able to persuade the Government in time not only to produce an analytical description of the Government interventions that have accumulated over the years but to put forward options so that we can construct a framework in which subsequent initiatives or considerations can be taken into account. Thus we can avoid the impact of the Green Paper on taxes on the husband and wife, which was less useful than it might have been and which did not take family circumstances as much into account as it should have.

I was glad to see in The Times yesterday that Ronald Butt, who I hope has been convinced of the value of Family Forum—he was not when it was first set up—talked about the importance of letting the married women's tax allowance be of value to her whether she was working or not. Still, in our society, too many parents and mothers of young children are forced out to work when they do not want to be, purely to make up the family income. If we want to reintroduce a reasonable element of choice so that people can help to reconcile their responsibilities at home and at work and decide whether it is in their interests and the interests of the children to go to work, we must avoid the ludicrous position at the moment when the tax allowances available to two parents at work are roughly two and a half times the single person's allowance, yet the tax allowances to a household where one adult is at work who is supporting another at home, are much less.

Sir Philip Goodhart (Beckenham)

Will my hon. Friend acknowledge the importance of the Government's job-splitting scheme to enable married women to work and still look after the family? Is my hon. Friend aware that my oldest daughter had to argue with the authorities for many months before she was allowed to split her job as a probation officer with a valued colleague? She wanted to split her job because she was starting a family. Indeed, her first child, my second grandchild, is being born at this moment, and he is another grandchild who will enter the family of my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Sir A. Kershaw).

Mr. Bottomley

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I wish him and my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Sir A. Kershaw) good fortune in their new grandchildren. I hope that my hon. Friend and his honourable co-grandparent will both be in the House on many more occasions to discuss family policy and to make sure that the issue of job-splitting that faces his daughter receives more attention, which it needs.

Nearly every adult will go through parenthood. They will face decisions on how much time they should spend at work and at home. The problem is that most of us pass through that stage in a relatively short time. The interests of those who work for 20 or 30 years appear to dominate those of people who will also work for 20 or 30 years, but who for five years or less will want to have the opportunity of keeping up with some sort of paid employment outside the home while they are also carrying out their family responsibilities at home.

If every hon. Member had the same personal experience as my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Sir P. Goodhart), this debate would have taken place 30 years ago and it would have been effective. I have often said in a rude generalisation that one of the reasons why family responsibilities and the family perspective are not taken into account sufficiently is that most Conservative Members appear to be too old or rich—neither of which applies to my hon. Friend—to know what family responsibilities are like, and most Left-wingers do not have family responsibilities because they spend every night at political meetings and do not have time to have children, let alone bring them up.

Mr. Keith Best (Anglesey)

Does my hon. Friend appreciate that some hon. Members are too young to have that experience, and are single?

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett (Stockport, North)

The hon. Gentleman is advertising.

Mr. Bottomley

It was not my intention to turn the debate into a marriage bureau for my hon. Friend the Member for Anglesey (Mr. Best). I look forward to his contribution to the debate.

We need to recognise that there has been an enormous lowering of the tax base together with improvements in various cash benefits with no rational amalgamation of their impact. A number of people like myself have called for a gradual reformation of our system of housing support. I shall give an example. Why should I be able to raise my mortgage from £7,000 to £12,000 to £25,000 as my income grows and get greater help at the higher rates of taxation? What is the public purpose in that? What is the public purpose in saying that it is better for an individual or a family to put more disposable resources into housing and get tax relief at probably four times the rate of tax relief on life insurance premiums? What is the reason for not grappling with that problem and beginning to make changes that would have more impact at the time of family formation so that more families can look after themselves in the way they want and have a free market choice on how to use disposable income when they become more wealthy?

If a couple choose not to marry or are unable to do so but live together, they can obtain £50,000 of mortgage interest relief, but a married couple cannot. A couple who are divorced or separated can obtain tax relief on the cost of private education, but a married couple cannot. Such anomalies must be tackled.

I am glad that neither this Government nor the Labour Government raised the £25,000 limit on mortgage interest relief. I hope that the Government will not do so in the future. When I asked my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister about the impact of raising stamp duty thresholds or interest relief, her answer made it clear that it would be most un-Conservative to lift the mortgage interest relief ceiling, so I hope that the Treasury will not propose that in the next or any future Budget.

It is far more important to concentrate help with housing at the time when it is most needed than to provide perks for people whose incomes increase. If we wish to help those on higher incomes—I am a great believer in higher incomes for the poor as well as for the relatively well off—it is better to be honest and lower the higher rates of taxation than continually to narrow the tax base, with consequently higher marginal rates of tax, and continually to provide perks and tax relief.

I do not wish to spend a great deal of time today on the financial side of family life, although I shall take advantage of every future opportunity to force my views through. Without trying to be awkward, I shall be persistent and, I hope, eventually effective. It is worth remembering that on any rational analysis the value of child benefit should be about twice its present level. Clearly this cannot be achieved quickly, as it took 25 years for the value to fall, but I am glad that the Government and, in part, the Labour Government managed to maintain the value of child income support roughly in line with inflation in the past few years, although a real increase is needed to achieve the same real value as in May 1979 when the Government came to office.

I also asked my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister what would be the cost to public funds of engineering a £2 per week increase in the net income of a family with two children either by increasing child benefit or by increasing the married man's tax allowance. The cost of achieving this through an increase in child benefit would be £550 million, but the cost of achieving the same result by increasing the married man's tax allowance would be more than twice that simply because half the people receiving that allowance do not have children.

A third way of increasing family income is to increase the pay of people at work. Much of the public sympathy for the Health Service dispute related to those on low pay with family responsibilities. A general pay increase for people at work, however, would apply in the same measure, in percentage or money terms, whether or not people were low paid and whether or not they had children. The resulting inflation hits those with children hardest. On any reasonable analysis of changes in the retail prices index over the past five or 15 years, it is clear that the prices of the items on which families spend most have risen faster than the prices of items on which people without family responsibilities tend to spend their money. For example, a black and white television set costs £60 now and cost the same five, 10 and 15 years ago. Allowing for inflation, therefore, the price has fallen dramatically. The same applies to video recorders, hi-fi equipment and holidays. Families, however, spend most of their money on children's clothes, fares and food, which have increased much faster in price, although the cost of food has risen less rapidly in the past two or three years.

Until we realise the importance of increasing child benefit, both in fairness to families and because it is important in avoiding inflationary pay increases, employers will continue to agree to pay deals that are counter-productive, especially for the low paid with family responsibilities.

Ministers sometimes ask whether I can prove that increases in child benefit will result in smaller pay increases. One cannot prove that, but in the 25 years in which child income support was not maintained in real terms there were far more successful campaigns on behalf of the low paid. The TUC said that the minimum wage in 1970 should be £16.50, in 1974 £30 and in 1977 £60 per week. We are told that it should now be £90 or £100 per week. All that has been the consequence of the apparent success of demands on behalf of the low paid on the grounds that they cannot support wives and children unless they are paid more.

In the past three years, there has been a general reduction in the level of pay settlements. That has been associated in time with the maintenance of the level of child benefit compared with prices. Therefore, although there is no proof, there appears to be an association between the two.

Why do employers, especially in the public sector, agree to inflationary pay settlements? What ammunition do they lack in the argument which leads them to agree to settlements that are clearly counter-productive? I believe that they are ashamed to claim openly that a worker should be able to support a wife or husband and children on the lowest rates of pay. If the Government increased child benefit in real terms in line with their success in fighting inflation, I believe that there would be sufficient response from employers to achieve more realistic pay settlements.

At the time of the Plowden report on primary education, it was clear that the dominant influence on the success of a child's education was family support. That fact is not sufficiently discussed. We know, too, from the Court report on child health that the dominant influence on a child's health is the family. Research by people such as Harriet Wilson shows that the dominant influence on a child's behaviour is also the family. A great deal of time and resources is spent studying the mental health, behaviour and attitudes of individuals. Even more is spent on studying sociological groups. Too much research and analysis has been carried out on a class basis. The class basis is often important, but we should also study how people in the same apparent circumstances manage to bring about different outcomes for themselves. We should study similar groups of families living in overcrowded homes in poor, inner city areas to discover what determines whether their children are persisently in trouble with the law and what elements in the behaviour and functioning of the family lead to more successful educational results and better employment prospects.

All those factors should be discussed. We have better methods of sharing information on how to maintain our cars than on how to maintain our children and dependants. The Department of Health and Social Security and the Social Science Research Council should encourage researchers to concentrate on issues of family functioning. It is not for the Government to lay down how families must behave, but if we gather the information families will have a better chance of choosing how to behave and a better country for their children and grandchildren to grow up in.

It is worth quoting briefly from the booklet "Fair Shares for Families: the need for a family impact statement, 1980" by the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field). Not only is there social research on class bias but he talks about the impact of British politics upon the family and how people have been divided on class lines ever since the early 1920s. The result, as he puts it, is that it is immensely difficult for issues which are not class issues to find a place on the political agenda. It is difficult to raise new issues which cut across the traditional class boundaries.

In nearly all local areas there is a class mix. People share in sending their children to the same primary school, in having their elderly cared for at the same hospital and in joining together in church and chapel and youth activities. It is well worth encouraging such provisions. One of the great advantages of the family approach to policy issues is that it binds people together. What I believe was a highly disasterous debate two nights ago had, as part of the hidden agenda, the difference between black and white people. That would be removed by concentrating on family issues and would emphasise what people have in common.

For example, those people whose families and partners have been in Britain for a generation or two could learn what it is about family behaviour in the Chinese or Asian communities here which prevents their children from getting into trouble and encourages them to be successful at school, and what it is about many other groups that has contributed to their success in our community life.

In that way we can bind ourselves together, not split ourselves up into the rich and the poor, the caring and the uncaring, the black and the white, and the Catholic and the Protestant. We can concentrate on trying to reach that common ambition which Mr. Speaker often talks about as the greatness of our country. Our greatness depends on the extent to which we concentrate our investment on the future of our country and our people which is directly related to the cares and ambitions of families themselves.

At the other end of the family cycle are the elderly. One reason for a lifetime analysis of tax and benefit is that those who will be elderly in 40 years' time are now having families. Their housing opportunities will help to determine their circumstances when they retire. About one person in nine at work is caring for an elderly relative, although not necessarily full-time. Why will most employers allow people an extra two weeks of work a year—normally one week paid and one not—to attend a Territorial Army camp to help protect the future of Britain while many find it difficult to allow people time off when an elderly relative is in need of urgent care and attention? It is just as important, whether one looks at the financial burden of care in the community which falls on the Government or the hopes of most people to be able to care effectively for our elderly dependants, for people to have time off to care for such relatives as it is for a magistrate or a local county councillor to have time off to carry out his duties. Care in the community means reconciling home and work responsibilities.

There is the same proportion of the elderly in institutions as there was 72 years ago—one in 20. When we talk about the burden of the elderly we should talk about the burdens of the elderly themselves rather than the burden which the community faces in helping to care for them. Most of our elderly are highly competent.

When my grandmother came to help me in one of my election campaigns, we visited an old people's luncheon club. After talking to everyone, hopefully getting their votes and doing the washing up, my grandmother turned to me and in a loud voice asked how old the elderly people there were. I answered that the men were presumably 65 and over and the women 60 years and over. My grandmother asked why such people, rather than being waited on hand and foot and subsidised by the council, should not be in the tower blocks helping young mothers to look after the children rather than allowing them to be stuck between four concrete walls on the seventh floor, 25 per cent. of them becoming depressed. The contribution that such people can make needs to be encouraged.

I am pleased that my successor as chairman of Family Forum—John Stackpole—has put forward as part of the three major proposals for Family Forum during the next year, in addition to concentrating on a better pattern of taxation and benefits for families and the benefits of a family orientated approach to the policy of unemployment, the co-ordination of health and social services at the lowest level of all—the patient and client. I hope that when the Minister replies he will develop the importance of care in the community and the enormous contribution that families and voluntary organisations can make as well as the valiant work of the many paid professionals.

The problem is that many people in local communities do not know what help is available when they first become worried. I am not just talking about the health needs of people. We have not seen much analysis of the families who attend child guidance units. Families are generally referred by one professional to another. We should be able to discover from those families when they started being worried about what eventually was caught by the professional net. If one talks to inspectors from the National Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Children one discovers how many families refer themselves to agencies of help, perhaps worried about their behaviour to their children or their children's behaviour as such. That should be encouraged.

I hope that local authorities, or perhaps local family groups on the lines of Family Forum, will not just start to produce formal directories of the assistance that is available in a local area but start working through the network of carers and helpers so that the people in contact with a family in need will know what other resources are available. That would not require much public funding but it would require public attention and a realisation of its importance. In some areas people are doing that already.

The Government would be well advised to pay attention to the work of Dr. Mary Seacombe in the Gloucestershire Association of Family Life. She also works for the Gloucestershire health authority. They are doing much work to prepare people for family life and to bring people together to work for and with families and involve families. Similar initiatives have been taken in Leicestershire with the home start scheme. There are also people in the North-East working with families to help them reinforce their confidence and increase their competence.

Enormous advantages will accrue to the country when our family care is more successful. For example, we know that when handicap is avoided at birth the community is saved £25,000 during the lifetime of the child. That is why it is so important to recognise the work of the Spastics Society and the maternity allowance in helping people to realise how their beheviour, as well as public services, affects a child's birth.

We have clearly not gone far enough in preconceptual care or Britain would not still have 120,000 people a year requesting an abortion as an answer to their problems. For a civilised educated society to tolerate that year after year is disgraceful. Every year or so in the House there are attempts to alter the law. I am not arguing for a change in the law but I should like to state my belief that abortion is wrong. However, if it is to take place it is better that it should be legal, safe and early.

I am arguing for a greater concentration on how people find themselves in such circumstances. We should not eliminate abortion in one go but ask how we can reduce the 120,000 a year to 60,000 a year over 10 years. How can we be bring together those who are against abortion and those who believe it should remain legal? We should seek their advice on what can be done.

This may mean parents and teachers getting together at the start of the child's transfer to secondary school to discuss preparation for family life or sex education. No longer should we tolerate local newspaper headlines saying one week that teachers are leading children astray and the next week that parents are irresponsible. There is a common concern. The attempt should be made to find the mechanism to defuse the issue and to bring it into the open so that it can be discussed more effectively.

I wish to give a short preview of what I think will appear in the Law Commission's report on illegitimacy due to be published, I believe, next week. The hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) and I were involved in a preliminary seminar on the issue in Oxford some years ago. The more that one can lift the burden of illegitimacy off children, the better. It should, if necessary, be placed on the parents. We should try to treat children as children. The number of children born to parents who are not married may have increased. What has also increased is the number of instances in which the parents voluntarily put both names on the birth certificate. I regard that development as good. People need to be more open about what they are doing.

I am a great believer in the transfer of the value of the married man's tax allowance over a period of years into a combination of higher child benefit and home responsibility allowance. The idea of a home responsibility allowance has already been developed under different names. One example is invalid care allowance. I am sure that the Government are aware of the importance of making the invalid care allowance available to married women. The problem is deciding how the money can be provided. The answer is that anything received in one set of circumstances must be paid for in another.

People should be willing to say what they are prepared to give up, so that they can benefit at other times of life. The problem is to decide between a higher tax threshold to provide more resources or schemes such as that proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir B. Rhys-Williams) which provide a basic income guarantee with higher apparent rates of tax on any additional income. I stand firmly behind the proposal for converting tax allowance into tax credits. This would ensure that the most effective help goes to those at the lower end of the income spectrum.

I do not intend to speak at great length about crime. Those who are affected by crime are aware of its impact. Half of recorded crime is committed by juveniles, much of it by a relatively small number. Few of us had perfect childhoods. It is important, however, to recognise the value to society of getting rid of avoidable crime. I hope that organisations such as insurance companies will respond to requests for resources to try to make sure that the family impact on juvenile crime is accorded a higher profile and attracts greater public awareness. When family organisations ask for financial help, it is right that over half that help should come from bodies other than the Government. It is as important for insurance companies or building societies to fund family organisations as it is for them to fund cultural activities which, I admit, provide a great deal of entertainment and possibly education. To achieve a proper balance, more help needs to go to those working for families and on their behalf.

I recognise that I have not provided a formal definition of what I mean by "family". I hope that, in addressing the House, I do not need to do so. For most of us, the family means people brought together by connections of choice and chance—people who are married to each other or who have a blood link. We should not allow ourselves to become hooked on too much of that. If people are performing family functions towards each other and for each other, that should be sufficient for the purposes of debate.

I have not devoted a great deal of attention to the battle between what is loosely called the moral majority and the progressives. That is not basically at issue. People should be able to argue that the mass media, especially television, have to recognise that people are watching programmes until later in the evening. There is a great deal to be said for self-control by the programmers to make sure that the material shown is generally acceptable to family audiences.

It is not for hon. Members or the Home Office to say that there should be only so many four-letter words before 9 pm or to suggest a quota for later hours. It should be recognised that the standards of behaviour adopted by most of us are set by example. Most parents try to bring up their children well. Most children are natural mimics and copy their parents. It is important to recognise the impact of television on families.

I hope that I have set out the field of family policy debate. I am not directly asking the Government to do anything now. I hope that they will bring the family perspective to more of their work. If the Government consider that there are some actions which it is sensible to take but which are politically impossible now, I hope they realise that it is worth engaging the help of the rest of us to make possible what is right. The maxim of Lord Butler, which I believe he borrowed from someone else, that Politics is the art of the possible is too lean an aim. We should set our targets higher. We should try to say not only what is possible but how things can be made possible.

Many desirable aims require an alliance of people concerned with the family. If the Government are to respond effectively, families should try to recognise what more they can do for their own purposes. Nearly all of us have ambitions for ourselves, our families and our dependants, whether elderly or young. I hope that, partly as a consequence of this debate, more of us will be able to match our ambitions with actions. We should have the courage to carry burdens when they arise. We should do so more joyfully and celebrate the fact that families nowadays are in better condition. With our help and family help, they can be in even better condition in years to come.

10.28 pm

Mr. Leo Abse (Pontypool)

The House will be grateful to the hon. Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) for ensuring that hon. Members have the opportunity to discuss family policy in the terms expressed in the motion. We must be grateful also to the hon. Gentleman for the sensitive manner in which he has presented the issue. The role of politics, I always think, is not to solve the conflicts that have happened. My experience teaches me that rarely do political demands, which spring from such techniques, produce permanent reductions in the tension level within society. The hon. Gentleman has subscribed to the ideal, which I support, of the politics of prevention to obviate conflict by the reduction of the tension level in society. This means, I agree, a continuing audit of the human consequences of social and political acts.

The aim of politics is less to solve conflicts than to prevent them, less to serve as a safety valve for social protests than to apply social energy to the abolition of recurrent strains in society. I welcome the approach of the hon. Member for Woolwich, West. The threadbare approach of those who describe themselves so eagerly as pragmatists leads them to deal with the symptoms and not the causes. It is not surprising therefore that the so-called solutions that emerge from that spurious pragmatic approach are often illusory and incantatory. It is healthy that the House is approaching the subject differently.

When the hon. Member for Woolwich, West sought to identify the focal points of tension, I was, however, a little uneasy. I welcome his warm reference to Eleanor Rathbone, at whose feet I sat more than once when I was an adolescent. I am glad that hon. Members have not completely forgotten the contributions made by former campaigners. They are so easily forgotten.

When the hon. Member for Woolwich, West admonishes, however moderately, trade unionists for their attitude towards family allowances, he should remember that those who were the innovators of family allowances were not the type of people whom he and I would admire. The Fascist States could probably claim to be first to give family allowances, but they corresponded to low wages. The historical factors must be taken into account when considering the resistance to the development of family allowances.

Any hon. Member, too, who has knocked on doors at elections will be aware that whenever family allowances had recently been raised there were increasing tensions among the childless and the old. The elderly in particular looked back to the period when they received little help. They often expressed resentment, which was startling to those of us who had young children. It is not enough to recast the payments without taking into account the politics of envy as well as those of care.

Reference was made to Mr. Butts' article in The Times. It was an article that I read with some anxiety. One would not disagree with his conclusion that he wanted to give parity to the mother at home so that she was not disadvantaged because she had chosen to bring up her young children. I found it much more sinister when, as I understood him, he suggested that by pressure, public insistence or State intervention married women should be compelled to return to the home to allow the limited amount of work available to be left to single women. I believe that would lead to even greater tensions within our society. The case advanced by the hon. Member for Woolwich, West will not be advanced by paying more attention to the working mother in the way that the article suggests.

The hon. Gentleman referred briefly, as l should expect, knowing his association with the organisation, to the report published yesterday by the Study Commission on the Family. I agree with him that it is important, when we are discussing the family, to remember that there was no golden age. It would be easy to have a debate replete with jeremiads, which would echo the view that has been expressed so many times, that the family has been going down hill since 1066.

The report emphasises that there is a constancy existing in our family lives despite the extraordinary changes that have taken place, particularly within the past 25 years. I believe that the hon. Member for Woolwich, West was right to emphasise that a high percentage of people live within an ambience of family stability. I accept what he said, but I would choose other examples. One has seen this week the way in which women have affirmed traditional values.

At Greenham Common there was an affirmation by grandmothers and mothers who were determined to show that they do not want their grandchildren or children to be the last generation. They are the people who are affirming family values in a way that combines all that is best within the modern feminist movement with all the traditional values. I believe that it is through such demonstrations affirming the importance of life that we may be able to ensure the continuance of the family.

The women who were demonstrating were bringing to our notice the moods that they share privately: a capacity to nurse and nourish, to care, tolerate, improve and preserve and demonstrate a set of values contrary to the machism of men now insanely conquering outer space in phallic warships and preoccupied with phallic missiles. Too often men have no time for the interior life—the inner space that is the creative centre of women. These women show fullness, warmth and generosity, which are the psychic analogues of a woman in pregnancy, childbirth and lactation. Women who present such aspects are far different from the Prime Minister. The women at Greenham Common reaffirmed family values. The self-image is not that of an Amazon queen, which is how most people see the Prime Minister. Most people live in warm, good, workable and well-functioning families, as the hon. Gentleman said. However, perhaps the study commission report is a little to roseate.

Only misogynists would resent the change from the authoritarian role of the male to the democratic family. Women have been emancipated from the thraldom of domestic labour. They hive new freedoms through being able to work outside the home. They return enriched with social and community experience. That brings benefits, but it also creates hazards. There are new delicate balances in such a family. The lines between the roles of husband and wife and of mother and father are necessarily blurred. The balance can be seriously disturbed by changing economic circumstances.

I quickly discovered when I first represented my constituency that working wives of miners and their husbands were not highly regarded. Even 25 years ago in some mining villages a man's worth was depreciated and the wife's reputation besmirched if she worked. Fortunately, such attitudes have largely disappeared. When jobs disappear now, however, far greater turbulence is caused in families. In the 1930s, women stoically accepted the deprivations of the depression.

Unemployment is an increasing threat to marital stability. I have made certain observations through my work as a solicitor and through representing a constituency on which the curse of unemployment falls heavily. There are difficulties for families when a husband's unemployment benefit comes to an end and his wife is working. His wife's income then affects his social security position. A woman enjoys working. It enriches her life and gives her her own little income. How does she feel when there is no purpose in her continuing to work? The man will also resent continually being at home doing the chores for his working wife, when supplementary benefit rules bring no economic advantage.

The Government believe that tackling inflation is more important than tackling unemployment. They should translate glib economic policies into human terms. The balance in a family unit can be destroyed by prolonged unemployment. A woman may lose her job because of the Government's policies, which are exacerbating the recession. She may have to return to total dependency on her husband after for years earning her own money. She reverts to a more infantile role of utter financial dependency.

Those of us who deal with divorce know that parsimony can cause more trouble than adultery. A husband's parsimony can be extraordinarily destructive. A wife who has been accustomed to earning a wage may become unemployed. A parsimonious husband and a wife who has been earning a wage but who finds herself unemployed can find themselves in an explosive situation.

Another problem in a family can result from a working teenager and an unemployed father. The father may then lack authority—however benign—and that can produce extraordinary tensions.

We must consider the consequences for family life of 4 million people being unemployed. The large numbers of women who are now unemployed may not show up on the statistics because they do not register. Our high unemployment is one of the most destructive influences on family life.

There are other reasons for instability, apart from the financial aspects that I have categorised. When redundant directors or steel workers are out of work, too often they sink into depression. Their manhood and self-esteem go with the job. When people talk about the family, they often talk about morality. The worst immorality is to condone unemployment and acquiesce in its inevitability, instead of affirming that there is no problem when we have men and resources which could be used to ensure that there is enough work and therefore enough stability in our community.

In any event, even without the exacerbation of unemployment, we can have no ground for complacency. If we compare our divorce rates with those in other countries, we should remember that divorce rates often reflect the state of legislation in a country rather than the state of marital instability. We should understand that decree absolutes are no more responsible for marriage breakdowns than death certificates are for death. To those who glibly say that more relaxed divorce laws are necessarily a threat to the family, we can retort that they will find no comfort for their theory to know that Norway, for example, where there is easy divorce, has a low divorce rate, while Austria, where the laws are much stricter, has a high incidence of divorce.

Nevertheless, even after entering all the caveats and spelling out the fact that international comparisons of divorce rates can be misleading, an examination of our grim figures brings us no solace. We have one of the highest incidences—if not the highest—of marriage breakdown in Western and Eastern Europe, excluding only the USSR. Whether we study the divorce rate per thousand population or per thousand marriages, each year the sombre figure darkens further. There are now 150,000 divorces a year. If current trends go on unarrested, one marriage in three will end in divorce. During the past six years an appallingly high proportion of the 1 million children under the age of 16 of divorcing parents will have become effectively fatherless. Research increasingly corroborates that two years after the decree absolute the majority of children have the most attenuated relationship with their fathers. Most end with no contact at all with their fathers.

In reviewing the family function we can no longer comfort ourselves, as I notice that the report mentioned by the hon. Gentleman does, with the belief that the divorcing parents are establishing new stable relationships. Indeed, 40 per cent. of second marriages end in a further divorce. Now there is a new phenomenon. The divorcees' desire to start again appears to be waning dramatically. "Once bitten twice shy" seems to be the new response. In the decade 1972 to 1982, the number of divorces remarrying was halved. In 1972, 284 male divorcees per thousand of the divorced population remarried. Last year the figure was 137. The same diffidence to start again can be seen from an examination of the figures for women divorcees.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett

Does my hon. Friend accept that there are problems in that the figures do not list the number of people who form stable relationships, as opposed to the numbers who get married? For most people, it may not be the relationship and getting separated that cause the problems, but the legal tangles that they get into, which makes them feel that getting married legally has many disadvantages.

Mr. Abse

The Matrimonial Proceedings Bill, which will come before the House shortly, is an attempt to allow people who become second wives not to feel that there are serious financial disadvantages. I am sure that we can interpret the figures if we accept that they do not necessarily mean that there is instability. However, they show that marriage as the framework within which people live is not the one for which they opt.

t a time when many people opt for cohabitation, I take the old-fashioned view that the framework of marriage can act as a support for any human relationship. I do not enthusiastically agree with the idea, whatever advantages may be claimed for it, of people cohabiting and having children before marriage. There may well be many advantages. The report that the hon. Gentleman cited claims that there could be many advantages of pre-marriage cohabitation. I do not challenge that. Nevertheless, I believe that we cannot easily accept with confidence a situation in which children are born into cohabiting unions outside the framework of marriage. Whatever changes of mood there may be in this country, I still believe that children born into cohabiting unions, where the parents are not married, suffer legal disadvantages and have feelings of guilt and insecurity which could perhaps otherwise be avoided.

Although I have cited those figures, I do not believe that it is inevitable that our society will become increasingly dishevelled and that the advantages that society values within the family are irretrievably lost. However, if the malignant aspects of the changes that are occurring in personal relationships are to be reversed, and the more benign buttressed, as the hon. Member said in his motion, public policy should be further developed. If that means anything, it means, not lip service to the importance of the family, but a readiness to devote resources to sustain it.

The hon. Gentleman cited many instances where he felt that the Treasury was doing less than it should in devoting resources. Indeed, he complained of the manner in which it devoted existing resources. I can only say that, no doubt without insight or thought, the Treasury has had a most mischievous influence on family life in this country in recent years.

When we passed the Divorce Reform Act in 1969 the emphasis was on reconciliation. That was done largely at the behest of the Churches. It was said that the law should provide reconciliation procedures to attempt to save marriages on the brink of breaking down. Those procedures have been rendered a farce, largely as a result of pressures from the Treasury. As a result, we have introduced quickie divorces, do-it-yourself divorces and divorces under the so-called special procedure, which provides no possibility of intervention by those who could possibly save a marriage in danger of crumbling. Treasury pressure on weak Lord Chancellors has allowed divorce decrees to be granted in such a perfunctory manner that there is little or no opportunity to implement the reconciliation procedures intended by the Act.

Mr. Best

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the present procedure under which a solicitor merely has to sign a form stating that he has or has not considered with his client the prospect of reconciliation is hopelessly inadequate? Some marriages could be saved if greater emphasis were placed upon getting the parties together for the purpose of reconciliation.

Mr. Abse

I agree. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will emphasise the need for legal procedures that lead to reconciliation and allow for effective conciliation. Conciliation is different from reconciliation. Conciliation involves assisting the parties to deal with the consequences of the established breakdown by negotiating agreements, giving consents, and reducing the area of conflict in future arrangements. It should be possible for a court, with the aid of welfare officers, to reconcile differences. Such a procedure would give a much-needed opportunity for catharsis for people whose marriages have gone. It would enable them to mourn the death of their marriage, as failed marriages must be mourned, so that consequently they do not work out their anguish in hostility against themselves, the outside world or against their former spouse. The victims of such hostility inevitably are the children.

The work being done by Registrar Parmiter at Bristol and research on conciliation schemes being conducted by Gwyn and Kay Bader shows that opportunites exist if only the Treasury would not drag its feet.

The Lord Chancellor, under the pressure of the all-party committee on divorce reform, took the initiative and set up a committee of officials to advise Ministers on the nature and scope of conciliation services. The Attorney-General's written reply drawing attention to the committee's inauguration was, however, for me, heavy with foreboding. The Attorney-General said that the committee would advise Ministers on the nature and scope of conciliation services, and particularly whether they can produce savings and other benefits to the individuals concerned and public resources."—[Official Report, 8 March 1982, Vol. 19, c. 348.] The committee comprises representatives from the Lord Chancellor's Department, the Home Office, social services and the Central Policy Review Staff. I hope that the Treasury will not sabotage the development of conciliation procedures in our legal system.

The Treasury has a bad record. The terms of reference of the inter-departmental committee are such that it will be open to it, unless we are all alert, to produce a cosmetic report suggesting, perhaps, that more money be given to voluntary agencies outside the legal system. If that happened, the basic challenge of introducing conciliation services into our legal system would be evaded.

It is hoped that the committee will report by early next year. The Minister's officials are represented on that committee and I put it to him that there should he no nonsense about the report being secret. We have had no assurances that the report will be published, despite requests. It is a matter of great public concern. Both the legal and social work professions are agreed that the report should be published and that it should take into account the importance of conciliation.

I hope that the committee will take into account the costs mentioned by the hon. Member for Woolwich, West when he stressed the issues surrounding delinquency and deprivation that are associated with fatherless families.

Ideally, such matters should be dealt with by a family court. Everyone with experience has been calling for a family court for years. Conservative lawyers want it, the Law Society wants it—everybody wants it except the Treasury. Even the usual tempered equanimity displayed by the Law Society has been recently abandoned.

The Family Law Committee, in exasperation at the current Treasury claim that we cannot afford family courts, recently said that it is hard to avoid the suspicion that the issue of cost may be at least in part merely a diversionary tactic, possibly to disguise official apathy. Whether this unfortunate suspicion is justified or not, the deplorable result is that the benefits of a Family Court are being squandered because of a refusal to give proper thought to the issues involved. One comes up against the barrier, or supposed barrier, of cost every time the setting up of a family court is proposed. No explanation has ever been given of why a family court should be expensive. The Treasury is not prepared to enter into the real argument. We need the family court. The dissolution of the legal relationship is not usually very difficult. It is the simplest issue in a divorce. The questions about custody of children and financial provision are often much more difficult to resolve. To do so can require a knowledge of housing, social security law and practice as well as pensions. Frequently in such cases all concerned in them should have detailed knowledge of those matters. Even if those who come before the courts have some degree of expertise, they are not equipped, as matters stand, to deal adequately even with sometimes apparently simple cases.

Therefore, I hope that the conciliation report, which is due to come out early next year, will demonstrate that there is a new mood which understands that we can use our legal system to help to heal marriages as well as to break them. Divorce is too widespread in our community to be regarded as a peripheral problem. The issue of the custody of children has prompted the Lord Chancellor to appoint another committee and that subject, too, requires urgent attention. We could do more if the will was there. The hon. Member for Woolwich, West has done the House a service by placing a new emphasis on the need for the Government genuinely to give the family support, instead of paying lip service to it, as all Governments have tended to do. Without the anchorage of a stable family system we can look forward only to further anomie and estrangement in our society.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Woolwich, West on his good fortune in being able to initiate a debate and the manner in which he has used it in raising this subject.

11.12 am

Mr. Keith Best (Anglesey)

The House owes a debt of gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) for having given us a formidable tour d'horizon of family policy and of what he would like the Government to do to ensure that the family is preserved. All hon. Members believe that the family is the basic unit of society and is vital for the cohesion of society, particularly when that cohesion is threatened by increasing unemployment and other pressures.

My hon. Friend is well known for his views on family policy. No hon. Member could have done more than he has in bringing such issues before the House. He said that he believed in bringing the family into politics. Perhaps that is why his wife is standing as the Conservative candidate for the Isle of Wight. Perhaps we shall have three Bottomleys in the House. I certainly hope so. My hon. Friend was right to preface his remarks by emphasising that the majority of children live with their two parents, are properly brought up and suffer no deprivation. However, the House is charged with redressing wrongs and identifying pressures that may lead to a deterioration in the family.

There is a need for prophylaxis and for the politics of prevention adumbrated by the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse). I agree that we must identify the pressures and, if possible, remove them from the family. At the same time, we must consider the many people who do not enjoy the benefits of full family life. Although they may be a minority, the House should ensure that they are given as much consideration as those who enjoy the full benefits of a proper family life.

Any speech on this subject must include fiscal matters, such as family taxation. Indeed, both my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West and the hon. Member for Pontypool referred to that. It is often more financially advantageous to live together than to marry. However, I shall not cite the many examples of that. My hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West mentioned mortgage relief. Investment income surcharge is another example, although it may affect only comparatively few people. Perhaps I have given the two ends of the spectrum. I shall not go through the list of examples between those two poles, as they are well known, particularly to the Treasury. Instead of penalising the married couple, there should, if anything, be some financial recognition of the fact that married women in particular lose their career prospects and take themselves out of society's work mode so that they can devote their time to bringing up children.

Mr. Peter Bottomley

I hope that my hon. Friend will bear in mind that it is probably more arduous to devote oneself to family responsibilities at home than to work outside the home.

Mr. Best

My hon. Friend has anticipated me. It has been suggested in several quarters that there should be some allowance in acknowledgement of the fact that it is just as arduous—if not more so—to bring up a family as to have a nine-to-five job, such as that of a secretary. However, at present there is no acknowledgement of that. I am not suggesting that every mother who chooses to stay at home to bring up the children should be paid the equivalent of what she could obtain if working as a full-time secretary, but that point must be considered, because it shows how the House tends to view those who stay at home to bring up children.

There can be no doubt that those in families suffer a heavier fiscal burden than those who are not. The increase in the proportion of income paid in tax and insurance has been greater for those with children than for those without. Since the beginning of the 1960s the tax load has increased three times as rapidly for a family with two children as for a childless couple, and four-and-a-half times as rapidly as for a single person. Since that time the tax break-even point for a family with two children has fallen by 42 per cent. relative to average earnings, while the drop for a childless couple and for a single person has been only 26 and 20 per cent. respectively.

Child support is worth less to a taxpayer today than it was in 1955. The Prime Minister noted on 9 November, at c. 422 of the Official Report—in answer, I believe, to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West—that, assuming 6½ per cent. inflation in November, the real value of the child benefit at the uprating will have decreased by about 4 per cent. since April 1979.

If my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir B. Rhys Williams) catches your eye later in the debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am sure that he will have much to say about child benefit, which is his forte. He brings the subject before the House with fortitude on many occasions, and I look forward to hearing what he may have to say about it.

Apart from the great benefits that child benefit brings to families, it must be right philosophically. I believe that no hon. Member would dissent from the view that we should move increasingly towards a tax credit system. Child benefit marks the beginning of such a system, and we should always seek to extend it. The system of child benefit is the only way in which tax relief can be directed specifically to families. It is far more redistributive to those on low incomes than increases in personal allowances or a reduction in the basic rate of tax can ever be.

I asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he would give the cost to the Treasury for a full year of increasing tax allowances by 12 per cent. and of increasing child benefit by £1. In an answer on 3 March 1982 I was informed that the cost of increasing tax allowances would be £1,760 million at 1981–82 income levels, and that the increase in child benefit would cost only about £550 million. It may be said that there are finite resources for that equation, but one could still have an increase in personal allowances in excess of 8 per cent. and completely satisfy the desire to increase child benefit by £1.

Child benefit aids those who are in work as well as those who are not. One of the gravest problems—unfortunately it is not identified nearly as much as it should be—is how to encourage the unemployed to seek employment. How can one say to a man who is in receipt of unemployment benefit, with which he has to feed not only himself but his wife and children, that he should try to be an entrepreneur and set up a business, even if it is buying tin cans wholesale and selling them retail out of a wheelbarrow, when he knows that as soon as the wheelbarrow hits the pavement he will lose his unemployment benefit, despite the fact that he may not see any immediate financial return from that form of activity? What incentive is there for a man to come off the unemployment register?

I believe that the Government are addressing their mind to the problem, because there is a pilot scheme, known as the enterprise allowance, which guarantees a payment for 12 months to anyone who seeks to come off the unemployed register and set up in business on his own. He has that cushion of financial support while he is endeavouring to set up a business, even though he may not see any great financial return from it in the initial period. It is a very important scheme and I hope that it will not be killed by the Treasury once the pilot period has ended. The scheme should be extended throughout the United Kingdom, because it would encourage people to come off unemployment benefit. But child benefit overcomes the problem in any case, because it is paid to the unemployed and to the employed. That is another reason why child benefit is such an important part of the panoply of support for the family.

About 750,000 children are dependent upon an unemployed adult. The level of total child support as a percentage of a married couple's unemployment benefit stood at 30 per cent. in November of this year, whereas in the same month last year it was 33 per cent. In 1980 it was 36 per cent., in 1979 it was 38 per cent., and in 1975 it was 39 per cent. Therefore, there has been a progressive reduction, in percentage terms, of the amount given to an unemployed couple with which to look after their children. The figure has also been reduced in real money value terms, and great attention should be paid to overcoming what appears to be a trend in the wrong direction.

It would be entirely wrong if reference were not made also to single-parent families. The figure is open to dispute, but I understand that about 12 per cent. of the children in Britain are from single-parent families. I have frequent contact with single-parent families in my constituency. Recently a lady in her thirties, who is divorced and has a 4-year-old child, came to see me. She told me that she was receiving benefit of just over £40 a week. She said "I cannot afford to buy my young child a really nice present this Christmas." It might be suggested that a certain amount of the supplementary benefit could perhaps be put aside for Christmas presents, but it is very difficult to live on supplementary benefit and to put something aside for presents when money has to be found for clothes and the other incidentals, particularly for a growing child. My constituent's point was that if the Government can give a £10 bonus to the pensioners, there is no reason why it should not be paid also to single-parent families. I am sure that the pensioners are deserving of the bonus, and I pay tribute to the Government for having paid it consistently. This is not a party political occasion. We know that the payment was not made at an earlier time by a former Government, but I hope that the practice will be adhered to stringently by this Government.

A £10 bonus is not a great deal of money. I sought recently to find out how much it would cost in a full year to give a £10 bonus to single-parent families. I have not yet had an answer and I make no criticism of the Government as I asked the question only recently—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West gives me a quicker answer than the Treasury. He says that it would cost about £12 million. I do not know whether that figure is correct, but if such a bonus were paid it would be of genuine benefit and help to single-parent families at Christmas time when they are trying to buy presents for their children. The problems confronting such parents are often due to no fault of their own. But whether or not they are the fault of the parents, it would be entirely wrong if the children were to suffer.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the present position is worse than that? Families in receipt of supplementary benefit are sometimes penalised because cash gifts that they receive at Christmas can be deducted from their benefits. The supplementary benefit officials can ask how a child acquired an expensive toy at Christmas. If he is told that the money was provided by a relative, that sum may be deducted.

Mr. Best

I have some sympathy with the hon. Gentleman's remarks. We could say that some of the payments received by those in receipt of supplementary benefit need not be deducted but we must consider the source of the payment.

I ask rhetorically: what is the commitment of the House to the family? Is it a concept in which we believe? The answer is axiomatic to the question. Of course we believe in the concept, because it is a basic desire of people to work and to live together, and in a welcome measure the Government are trying to persuade more families to retain their elderly relatives—my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West referred to this—within the family rather than send them to an old folk's home. In Germany, for example, the basements of many houses are known as granny flats, because that is where the elderly parents live. Although they often have self-contained accommodation, they are part of the family and live within the same bricks and mortar.

The arrangement benefits the elderly, but in a debate on family policy we should not forget the benefit that the family can derive from having its elderly people living with it. If a young mother who would otherwise be tied to a child at home wishes to go out shopping or to go out for the evening, perhaps to the cinema, the elderly parent will be ready to take on the job of nanny and of looking after the home while she is away.

Hitherto my remarks have been addressed entirely to the preservation and enhancement of the status of the family, but some families break down for a variety of reasons. The hon. Member for Pontypool said that more people are now being divorced at an increasingly rapid rate. I do not quibble with his figures for remarriages, but many people are marrying for a second time. Although some of those marriages may be subject to pressure, they are successful, which is to be welcomed. It is not always a matter of once bitten, twice shy. Sometimes greater experience leads to a more successful long-term resolution of problems.

The House must be sure that it does not make it impossible for a divorced man or woman to start another family after the breakdown of the original family, for which he or she may not have been responsible. Far too often the person who wishes to start another family is inhibited by the legal process from doing that with the same strength that he might otherwise have had. We need legislation to ensure that the balance is redressed so that those who wish to start a family after the breakdown of the first marriage can do so with more freedom. The hon. Member for Pontypool referred to legislation, of which he and I are sponsors, that will come before the House. We must examine its passage and the Government's attitude towards it. I believe that the Government will support the Bill.

There is no doubt that the original intention of the legislation passed by the House is no longer fully represented in the law as it now stands, because of the significant judicial precedent that has grown up on the financial matters that flow from the breakdown of marriage. It is time that that matter was fully ventilated again in the House, and we shall certainly be given the opportunity in the new year.

I agree with the remarks about the need for a family court. The Government will try to introduce a form of family court—it may have that nomenclature—but I suspect that it will not be what the Finer committee and many other bodies have suggested. However, even if it coalesces the jurisdiction of the present courts and creates a family court in name, that will be a welcome beginning, although I hope that the Government realise that many hon. Members will not be entirely satisfied until we see the establishment of a proper family court, as was suggested many year ago.

Conciliation is very important. By "conciliation" I mean the ability of parties who are undergoing litigation as a result of the breakdown of marriage to come together, sort out their difficulties and end them by way of agreement. That applies especially to children and to financial matters. It may be a platitude, but I believe that if two parties can come together and agree the future of their children that agreement will last much longer than a court order that may cause one party to leave the court room feeling that he has been discriminated against or that he has lost. That terrible concept is inevitable in adversarial advocacy in our present court system and applies to family matters, just as to criminal matters, whereby one side wins and the other loses. We must get away from that concept. It could be remedied by the establishment of a family court, but conciliation must be an integral part of the process.

If we can have an arbitration and conciliation advice service in industrial matters, why cannot we have it in family matters? Is it not more important to have such an arrangement in family matters? We already have a precedent for a conciliation service and we should extend it to families. I have experience of the great success of the conciliation service in Brighton, which operates within the judicial process. It is manned by court welfare officers, all of whom are experienced probation officers, and it has had marked success in bringing together those who are disputing matrimonial cases and effecting an agreement between them, especially on the future of the children. The process saves money, not only because a court welfare officer's report need not be prepared, but because the parties, having come to that agreement, are less likely to indulge in further litigation. If they are satisfied that they have made a significant input into an agreement, they will not feel quite the same need to return to court at the first possible opportunity to seek to overturn what would otherwise have been a court order.

Family life is a manifestation of a fundamental desire of people to live together. I believe that family life will survive us in this place. Indeed, it has a pedigree that is even longer than that of the House. Our function must be to ensure that nothing about family life is endangered and that everything we do is designed with the one goal in mind—to make it that much more secure.

11.41 am

Mr. Ronald W. Brown (Hackney, South and Shoreditch)

I concur with much of what the hon. Member for Anglesey (Mr. Best) said. His concept of a granny flat and caring for the elderly was especially apposite.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) on the way in which he opened the debate. He provided an excellent review. I agree that we should consider ourselves extremely lucky that we live in a country where life for most of us is reasonably good. We have the opportunity to earn a decent income. We have the security of the welfare state for those times in life when the going is especially hard. However, for a growing number of our friends and neighbours there are large gaps in the welfare state. Many have no chance of the financial independence that a job provides.

It is estimated that six million are living at or below supplementary benefit level, which we like to call the poverty line. These are hard-up pensioners, widows, the sick and the handicapped, the disabled and families with young children that are living on small pay packets. There are also the unemployed, those with housing problems and one-parent families. Once could almost argue that for them the welfare state has failed.

A number of factors contribute to family difficulties. First, and perhaps most important, is health. Housing is fundamental. Education has its contributory factor. Employment is a must, there is no doubt about that. There is a need for resources for families so that we can attack poverty. These are the perspectives that we must consider.

Housing is of paramount importance. There has been a steady decline over the years in the available stock of housing. There has been a decline also in the quality of housing. Rents are becoming enormously high. The Government argue that they want to make house purchase more attractive. Therefore, they want to make the renting of property less attractive. In that sense they will drive people from one form of housing to another. I am not wholly in agreement with the concept but if it were fair I would understand it. However, it is not fair. Not every family is in a position to contemplate the purchase of a house. The pressures are such that a dwelling can cease to be a home for someone who is having to pay rent at a level that he can ill afford. When that happens, the home becomes a place of conflict.

There is conflict when parents argue with each other about the adversities that they are facing. There is conflict between the parents and the children because the parents cannot give sufficient time to their children. There is conflict between children and children. They see the conflict between their parents and they in turn have conflicts between themselves. That leads inevitably to conflict between the family and its neigbours. Nothing destroys family life more than continual irritation and aggravation within or without the family.

Thus there is little dialogue within the family. There is the long-established idea of the family home being a place where we can have discussions and open our minds, become more one with another and think of problems within ourselves and of problems affecting the world outside. However, with a background of conflict there is no dialogue and no home life. More and more people are being treated for depression. People are leading a life of misery in their homes often because they have lost the fundamental meaning of what home is all about and not always because they do not have the wherewithal to maintain their homes.

In those circumstances the television becomes a tranquilliser. People sit in front of it to escape and they lose themselves. This is why we are so concerned about the sort of programmes that are being produced for television. The television authorities have an audience that is glued to the "box" because of the factors that I have described. This is being superimposed by the video explosion. The public are being encouraged and enabled to spend even more time in silence before the television screen.

We know that families can occupy council property—this is certainly the case in the area which I represent—only if they satisfy the top priority requirements—for example, the maximum medical and other problems. We know also that a family occupying council property must meet the person-per-room criterion, which has now increased to 1.25 persons per room. This means that the family has no room for anything else. There is nowhere else apart from the room in which the television is placed for the members of the family to sit quietly. They cannot go into another room because there is no such room to go into. They cannot take time off, as it were, to mediate a little or, when they come in feeling angry, to sit aside from the others and lose their anger.

Very often two children have to share one room, which is frequently a very small room. Even the children cannot lose themselves within their own environment, within their own bedroom, for example. This means that there is no possibility of having the dialogue that I have described.

Years ago we adopted the Parker Morris standards for council housing. We all paid maximum tribute to them. We thought that they represented a great step towards removing what might be described as a penalty for those living in council property. However, successive Governments, especially the present one, have rejected the Parker Morris standards. It has been said that the standards were too high or, if they were not too high, that they could not be afforded. Housing standards have been reduced. The Parker Morris standards provided extra living accommodation for the development of family life, That was their ethos. They were arrived at with the idea of enabling families to have a little extra "lung room" within their living accommodation which would enable members of the family to lose themselves for a while and to have some peace and quietness if they so desired. The Parker Morris standards have been allowed to die.

This means that young families are forced to leave the area in which they were brought up. If they are lucky enough to obtain their own home, it is often a long way from their parents. If they cannot get a home—this is increasingly the problem in my constituency—they take the only alternative and squat in any empty property that they can find. They feel guilty that they have done it—they do not do it with any great happiness because they would much rather be properly rehoused—and that often leads to a sense of injustice, which is reflected in the family life of the young family. The members of the family will argue and go through the cycle that I have described.

The hon. Member for Anglesey talked about the younger members of the family being prepared to take care of the older members of the family. He spoke of granny flats. How can that be done, when 90 per cent. of those in my constituency occupy council housing as I have described it? Those people do not have enough space in their homes. They have no chance of providing a home for their widowed mothers or fathers.

Therefore, we face a tragedy. In many parts of the country, people are being driven into misery and their family life is being made into a burden simply because our society consists of those who have and those who have not. The rate support grant announcement yesterday wall not help councils to begin to understand the meaning of this debate, which was introduced so eloquently by the hon. Member for Woolwich, West.

Another big problem which has been identified by all hon. Members is that of the needs and resources that are available to families. The elimination of poverty is one of the principal issues. There are four principles, which my colleagues and I in the Social Democratic Party have discussed. They are the elimination of poverty, the reduction of the poverty trap, the simplification of the social security system and the abolition of claiming by a major reform that will integrate taxation and benefits. It cannot be right for millions of men and women to have their dignity and self-respect diminished by the ordeal of making sense of the bewildering array of more than 40 types of means-tested benefits.

We propose to eliminate the poverty trap under which a pay increase for a low-income family can make it worse off because of the combined effect of paying tax and losing benefits. We shall give more incentives by ensuring that people will be better off working than not working and better off if they earn more. We propose to end the unfair swing of the tax and benefit system, which for 20 years has moved away from families and children, by tilting it back towards children and poor families.

We propose to provide more support for one-parent families, poor pensioners, the unemployed, sick and disabled. We will be selective rather than universal. Those who are more in need will receive benefits and the high income earners will not. One will keep down the costs by channelling scarce cash where it is most needed.

There is also the importance of the integration of the new benefit system with the present tax system, so that we shall eliminate the new poverty traps that would be likely to be created. We propose to eliminate the major means tests and substitute automatic payment of benefits. Once the Inland Revenue has been fully computerised, it should be easy to undertake that.

In the interim, we believe that the claimants should not have to traipse between several different offices, as they have to do today. That would increase the take-up of benefit, which so far none of us has been able to get anywhere near an acceptable level.

The present system denies benefits to many people who need them most because it is too complicated to understand, too bureaucratic and unfair in its operation. Our ideas will make the system more streamlined, easier to understand and less bureaucratic.

We want to eliminate the poverty trap and create more employment. No Government have the right to destroy whole industries, as the Government have done; nor can they have the right to decide that the country should be no longer a manufacturing nation but a servicing nation. The Government have decided that we should become bellhops and waiters and the servicing mechanics for the world outside. We should not be the carriers of water, leaving only the smart-Alicks to do the buying and selling to make their living. We must make unemployment a major issue. I cannot live with 4 million people unemployed—and the figure is much more than that, I believe. That is repugnant. All of us, whatever our party, must seek to solve the problem in 1983.

Education must be geared to participation in life. We must give our young people the opportunity to come to fulfilment. We are providing young people with an education, but at the end of the day there is no work for them so that they can use the education that they have attained. We must review educational matters to make sure that we are providing the system we need.

I return now to the improvement of health care services, on which I have spoken often in the House, and which is of paramount importance. The Minister and I have discussed it many times. I know that he feels that I am a bit of a nuisance, as I keep on raising the matter. I do not intend to go into it at length today, but I must say that I believe that it is important. We must get back to preventive medicine rather than cure. I feel passionately and strongly about that, as the Minister knows. Governments must get round to examining once again what is happening in the National Health Service to make sure that we begin to bring it back to the standards that so many of us have tried to maintain over the years.

I commend the final words of the hon. Member for Woolwich, West, when he said that we did not need to overdramatise the problems. They are self-evident in many ways. We must have the courage to face up to providing what is necessary to protect people in our society who are less fortunate than ourselves. That means a massive programme of redistribution to the needy, especially to hard-up pensioners, families with young children and low incomes, the sick, disabled and homeless and the unemployed, so that poverty in Britain will be ended. We shall have to motivate our colleagues more than we have done. I seldom receive letters from my constituents demanding to pay more taxes to help more people. I hope that the debate will be a further step in the process of trying to attract people's attention to the needs and poor standard of living of many people. The rest of us must make our contribution to that process.

11.59 am

Mrs. Sheila Faith (Belper)

I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this important debate on family policy. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) on choosing the subject and on making such an excellent, informative and moving speech.

I agree with the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) and with my hon. Friend the Member for Anglesey (Mr. Best) that it is very sad that the divorce rate has doubled in the past 10 years and that it is important to re-examine the divorce rules, especially the reconciliation procedures. I agree, too, that all support should be given to children in one-parent families. Unfortunately, we must accept that the number of such children is increasing. Nevertheless, the majority of children are still brought up in the old-fashioned family with a mother and a father. I wish to deal with that group, as they still comprise seven out of eight of all families.

Family life in this country is not a matter for despair. Things are not so bad as some people make out. The majority of elderly sick people and even the senile elderly are cared for by their families. It seems, however, that insufficient care and attention are given to the upbringing of children. This is reflected in the increase in juvenile crime and the difficulty experienced by teachers in upholding discipline in the schools. We must try to discover the causes of this.

Even a career woman such as I, whose mother was also a career woman, must wonder whether the current problems are related in some way to the fact that so many women in this country now work. The number of women working has increased by 77 per cent. since 1961. In 1961, 31 per cent. of women worked. The proportion is now 57 per cent. and we have the highest activity rate for women in Europe.

Although the lines may be smudged, I believe that most children look to their mothers for security. I refer here not to highly trained or highly skilled mothers. Those who are engineers, doctors, dentists or Members of Parliament can afford to support and provide help for their children while they themselves are at work, as did my own mother in the 1930s. Moreover, highly educated young people are well aware of the problems. Hunter Davies reported in The Times in May that when he visited St. Paul's school he found that, although most of the 11-year-old girls wished to take up careers, all of them said that they wished to take a few years off from those careers to stay at home and give proper care to their children while the children were young.

Those most at risk are the non-skilled women, who may listen to the siren calls of some woman Labour Members and some of the women in the trade union movement who call for crèches to be established in every place where women work in the factories, in the shops and even in the Palace of Westminster. They may be looking towards the kind of life lived in the Soviet Union, where people prefer the State to take over and do not mind if the family withers away and child care is institutionalised.

In this country we have read today how the Greater London Council is providing a grant for the women at Greenham Common to set up a créche for their children. The hon. Member for Pontypool said how noble those women were compared with the Prime Minister. I can understand their motivation—it is clear that their hearts are ruling their heads and I believe that they are misguided to demonstrate in that way—but it would certainly be a poor thing if the Prime Minister acted in the same way. She must allow her judgment to rule her decisions and realise that it is important to have discussions leading to multilateral nuclear disarmament.

Women Members of the Opposition seek to promote creches, but even in Russia recent studies have shown that children brought up in créches when they are very young are retarded in their development. Moreover, when the Select Committee on Social Services visited Sweden, an eminent physician stated that 25 per cent. of children who were in créches when they were young suffer from psychological disorders.

It is also not a good use of resources. As the Minister knows, Camden council has set up a créche for its own employees. The running cost is £4,800 per child per year. That cannot be the right use of resources. Any resources available should be used to encourage, although not to compel, young mothers to stay at home for the few years when their children are small, before the children go to school. There should be financial incentives for them to do that. The Government's concern about family life has led them to issue a consultative document on the taxation of husband and wife, and the married man's tax allowance is now the subject of debate. If that allowance were removed or reduced, extra resources might be available for young women who stay at home to look after their children. As my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West said, Ronald Butt suggested in his article in The Times yesterday that women who stay at home should have a personal tax allowance, as do women who work. That would mean £1,565 per year for such women. That is a splendid idea.

Other countries are already considering that idea. I understand that in Lower Saxony and in Berlin the West Germans are now seeing the effects of paying young women to stay home and look after their children. I appreciate that the West Germans are also trying to cope with the problem of an elderly population in Berlin and other areas, but I am sure that they also see such schemes as greatly assisting family life.

I realise that life is not always easy for young women who stay at home. Often they do not have the support of their mothers and aunts, many of whom also now work. I praise the work of the pre-school play groups and other voluntary good neighbour schemes, because they provide great assistance. The Government have also increased the number of nursery school places, even at a time of economic stringency. That is greatly to be commended.

We must educate and encourage young mothers to take a proper interest in their children. There will be plenty of time to devote to their careers later, when they can take up part-time work. As has been pointed out, the Government's job splitting scheme is greatly to be commended. The fact that part-time work is available is very good for family life. The woman who devotes most of her time to looking after small children will have the great satisfaction of doing a worthwhile job. She may then return to work in the knowledge that she has performed a task that only she can carry out.

I have been delighted to take part in the debate, as family life is a cornerstone of our civilisation and it must be sustained. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West again for initiating this debate on family life and family policy.

12.8 pm

Mr. Thomas Cox (Tooting)

Like the hon. Member for Belper (Mrs. Faith) and indeed all who have spoken, I welcome the opportunity to take part in the debate and to congratulate the hon. Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) on his presentation of it. Those of us who have been in the House for some years know that he has always been deeply involved in the subject and that it is a sphere of activity in which he is held in high esteem not only in the House but outside.

I am sure that all Members of Parliament accept the concept of family life and do all that they can to support it in the areas that we represent and in which we live. Family life succeeds against the background of the society in which we live. However, as one goes to meetings and sees constituents, one finds a feeling of despair. Although the motion is commendable, it will not mean much to many people who live in my part of south London or, indeed, in many other parts of the country.

Long before I came to the House, when I started to become involved in politics and to meet the people whom I sought to represent, I wondered what it was that a family sought from life. The vast majority seek four basic things. First, they seek a home where they can live and bring up a family. Secondly, they seek a job. The breadwinner wants to go to work to bring in the money that will pay the bills and give his family a certain standard of living. Thirdly, they seek a good school to which their youngsters can go. Finally, at the end of the week when all the bills are paid, they want a little money left over to spend as they wish.

In the course of the many debates that we have had in the House on such topics, many hon. Members criticise how some people spend what I would call their surplus money. However, that is a decision for the individual, whether it be that they go along for a drink in the pub or go into a betting shop and bet on a horse or a dog race, whether they go out at weekends to buy clothing or save up for something for the home or a holiday. It is those simple things—as I call them—that the vast majority of people in Britain seek from life.

Sadly, for millions of people today, much of that is impossible because of the conditions in which they now find themselves living—in many cases, just existing. Governments have the prime responsibility for creating the stable conditions of family life. Sadly—this has been touched on by other hon. Members who have spoken today—Government policies are destroying that base. Between 3½ million and 4 million people are unemployed. Irrespective of where those people are, be it in Scotland, the North of England or where I live in south London, the first thing that that does is to erode the standard of living that families have built up often over many years of hard work.

Television programmes from time to time relate the effects of unemployment in different areas of Britain, and one sees that unemployment is now starting to cause the break-up of families and parents who have been married for many years. That is something that we must emphasise strongly in a debate such as this.

We rightly talk about the very real problems of young people who are now out of work. It is without doubt a real problem to many youngsters and to their families. However, a problem to which we do not always give sufficient attention is that of the man aged between 40 and 55 who has never been out of work in his life and suddenly becomes unemployed. Many such people enjoy going to work and find themselves completely lost without it, unable to know what to do. Often, jobs are lost when there are still many major commitments—perhaps the purchase of a house or children still at school. Until two or three years ago, there was a time when I never saw the people whom I am now seeing at my advice surgery. However, week by week I am receiving more and more letters from such people telling me of their plight and asking if I can try to find them a job. I have no more success in doing that than they do.

I shall not go into the mounting numbers of people who have been made unemployed since the Government came into power. We all know the figures. However, we cannot have a debate of this kind without relating to the Minister yet again the enormous problems that unemployment creates in the very issue that we are discussing today. There is no doubt—we often hear it mentioned—that there are two countries within the United Kingdom—the North and the South. In this House we hear the terrible experiences of hon. Members from Scotland and the North of England as a result of the unemployment problems that those areas face. However, as the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Brown) knows as a London Member, as indeed do I, many parts of London have problems as great as those of our colleagues who come from Scotland and the North.

On Wednesday this week I attended a public meeting in my constituency following a letter that I received from the Balham family centre. I shall not read all the letter, only one paragraph: The meeting has been called as a result of the problems that local residents face because of young unemployed people hanging around the area at a loose end and often behaving in an anti-social manner. That meeting was well attended by people of all age groups from the area. One saw all the bitterness that sadly exists in many parts of Britain. The youngsters said that, through no fault of their own, they could not get jobs. It was pointed out that there are now six vacancies in Wandsworth and over 700 youngsters unemployed. Therefore, one can see the utter despair that those youngsters feel.

Coupled with that is the fact, which was forcibly made at the meeting, that there are no facilities in the area for those who are out of work. There is a local launderette in the area of the type that we see all over Britain. I suppose that it is warm and lighted and that is where the youngsters go in the evening because there is nowhere else, and that causes problems.

As we discussed the issues that concern people in Balham, one was made to realise yet again that, because of the cuts, we sadly could not get the money to do the many things that the officials of the Balham family centre said could be done and that they wanted to do.

This morning I heard the right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King), the Minister for Local Government and Environmental Services, talking about the rate support grant. People before him had told of the effects that they saw the present rate support grant having on their areas. He said that no such things would happen and he quoted—I suppose because he thought that it would strengthen his case—the London borough of Wandsworth, for which I am a Member of Parliament. He said how wonderfully it was doing. The right hon. Gentleman cannot know much about the London borough of Wandsworth. He may sit at his desk looking at figures that appear to him impressive. Obviously, however, he knows very little about the true feelings of people living in the borough.

I could give many examples, but I shall give just one which highlights the problems of those living in the Balham area. The old Tooting public baths in my constituency became obsolete after the previous council built new baths. No one knew what should be done with the baths until the present leader of the Wandsworth council came along. He has only one policy—to get rid of the borough's assets as quickly as possible and to sell them off to anyone. Local community groups, youngsters, the elderly and I told him that the old Tooting public baths would make an ideal community centre for people of all ages. He did not want to know. He sold the baths. That illustrates the kind of despair that we have to live with. I speak to mums at school and youngsters at youth clubs. They say "It's all right for you. You have to tell us what the council or the Government are doing to try to help us overcome our problems." This brings me to the terms of the commendable motion before the House. The hon. Member for Woolwich, West refers to health, education and employment prospects. Those hon. Members representing large city areas know that the problems in those areas are much greater. I have referred to the many middle-aged men who are out of work. One has also to consider the young people who have been encouraged to try to do well at school in the hope of getting a good job. Instead, they find that jobs are unobtainable. I have received today a report from Shelter which is headed "Homelessness: The Mounting Crisis". I shall not refer to it. The title sums it up.

What are the Government doing about these problems? Every hon. Member receives letters or visits from people with real housing problems. Often, they can get no help from the council or the housing associations. There have been countless debates in the House about the problems of homelessness and other difficulties such as lack of housing and the urgent need for housing improvements. Yet the figures show that thousands of skilled building workers are out of work. When we try to get the message across to the Government, we never succeed. If we seek strong respectable family units that play a role in society, the housing in which they live is of paramount importance.

When we discuss lack of employment, lack of housing and lack of facilities where youngsters can spend their leisure time as they wish, the answer is always that the money that the Government would like to allocate is not available. I do not believe that. Nor, I think, do the vast majority of people. We are still a very wealthy nation. Only this week there have been reports of the enormous cost that the country now has to face following the Falkland Islands conflict. If, virtually overnight, thousands of millions of pounds can be found for that conflict, how is any hon. Member to say to constituents facing the problems I have described "We are sorry, but we haven't the money." They look at us; they do not believe it. In their position, I would not believe it. It is not only the cost of the Falklands conflict. Hon. Members have this week been debating nuclear weapons. No one can doubt the cost of this country's involvement in nuclear weapons over coming years.

I applaud the efforts of the hon. Member for Woolwich, West. The hon. Gentleman is well known for his total commitment on this important issue. Many comments are made by hon. Members about different aspects of family life. I know that issues such as mortgage payments are crucial to the family structure. I must, however, relate the conditions that I see in the part of south London that I represent. There is utter despair, not only among youngsters but also among many adults. They do not believe that the Government are trying to help them to overcome the problems. These are the real people with whom we have to concern ourselves.

Those who are lucky enough to have a job that pays a high salary do not have to face the problems that I have described. Much of the crime and vandalism in society stems from the kind of despair that I have outlined.

I urge the hon. Member for Woolwich, West to carry on with his work. I hope that the hon. Gentleman, with the support of other hon. Members, irrespective of party, will achieve far more success in trying to impress on the Prime Minister particularly the urgent need to change some of the policies that she has been pursuing over the last three years. That is the only way to bring about a real reestablishment of family life and family respect in our society.

12.28 pm

Sir Brandon Rhys Williams (Kensington)

It is particularly apposite that my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) should have chosen this motion at Christmas, when so many families are seeking to reunite, bring themselves up to date with their news and develop their relationships. One of the pleasant things about the debate, which shows the House at its best, is the unanimity of purpose and absence of party bickering. We have a common aim, and by working together as we are today our work can be extremely fruitful. We are all grateful to my hon. Friend for choosing this motion.

As my hon. Friend said, the future of the family is not entirely gloomy. Children have become much healthier than they were, even in recent years, and certainly than they were before the war; yet there is an increasing problem of juvenile crime. People are living longer, but we are more worried about the effect of mental illness on the elderly. There is now a much greater recognition of women's rights in law and social customs, and yet there are many more broken marriages. Until the past year or two there had been an upward trend in family living standards generally; and yet there are more people than ever living on supplementary benefit. The position is paradoxical and interesting. We need to look deeply into what is happening to the family in order to decide what we should do.

It is commonly said, and true, that the twentieth century is a time of rapid change. Some of the changes may be temporary and reversible, but two changes that have taken place in Great Britain during the twentieth century are almost certainly irreversible and have far-reaching consequences. One is the achievement of universal suffrage. Many people think of the campaign for votes for women, but it was only during the 1920s that universal suffrage was achieved for the men. It was a step forward in our concept of democratic practice which undoubtedly altered the political system. Universal suffrage meant much more. It meant an end to the long-standing division of the nation into Normans and Saxons—the people who ran the country and those who did the work. People will no longer tolerate the division in society between those who are in work and those who are in need. That is the Government's immediate problem. The nation is not prepared to allow an element—submerged tenth or even more than 10 per cent. of the people—to continue in some way as second-rate citizens. We have accepted the idea of the end of two nations. We must put it into practice. It is important for children and the elderly in their relationships to the family.

The second major change of the twentieth century is the emancipation of women, both at work and in the home, in their relationships to other members of the family.

These changes, I believe, are irreversible. We should ask what the Government should be doing to ensure that they are absorbed smoothly by our institutions and national life. But what should the House of Commons be doing? I am not a lawyer, but I believe that there has been a decisive change in recent years in the structure and practice of the law in relation to women and the family. The idea that women are entitled to a share of the family property has now become entrenched. In that context we should, perhaps, mention the name of Lord Denning, to whom so many people have reason to be grateful.

The hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) was correct when he said that we should establish family courts. We should go ahead with that change, which would bring the institutions of the law up to date with social trends.

We need, too, to look at the arrangements for the provision of services in kind. The House often comes back to such questions as the future of the Health Service, the future of education and of services to the home. I think that it is helpful if hon. Members see the debates that we have on these subjects in the context of the long-term changes that are influencing the shape of our society.

I have often tried to draw the attention of the House to the cash relationship between the individual and the State—to all the different ways in which the individual relates to the community, either by his obligation to make contributions in cash, or by the entitlement that he has to make claims on society's resources, expressed for the most part now in cash. This area is greatly in need of fundamental reform as a matter of business efficiency; but I think that it is even more important that we should understand the philosophy of the cash relationship between the individual and the State.

A practical recommendation that I have made on this subject is that we should reconstruct the Department of Health and Social Security. In fact, I have gone so far as to say in the House, and I say it again today, that it is a Department that ought to be broken up entirely, so that its different responsibilities can be handled in the most appropriate way.

I should like to see the health responsibilities of that Department re-established as a separate Health Ministry. I think that it was a mistake to incorporate the old Ministry of Health in the Department of Health and Social Security. Health is just as much entitled to a Ministry of its own as education. That unhappy amalgamation, which has never really taken effect as far as one is able to discern from the work of the Department, ought now to be undone. I should like to see a separate Ministry of Health again, and I think that it is a subject of sufficient importance for the Minister to be re-rated as a member of the Cabinet.

I believe that we really must look at the local responsibilities of the DHSS. Hundreds of offices all over the country are involved in individual casework, to a great extent duplicating the work done by local authorities. All the personal assessment and casework carried out by the DHSS, often under difficult conditions by dedicated but exhausted people, ought to be handed to local authorities. This is a move that I shall continue to advocate.

The cash side of the work of the Department, in particular the national insurance system, or what is left of it, ought to be amalgamated into a redistribution of income department—call it what one likes—and brought together with the Inland Revenue. The time has come to wind up the old national insurance system altogether, but this is not necessarily the day on which to go into fuller details on that subject.

I should not want my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, who I think is to contribute to the debate quite shortly, to feel that this is an attack on him personally, because I believe that working himself out of a job would be a high ideal and he can then move to responsibilities where his very great acumen and dedication can be used in another way. I do not want him to think that I am attacking him, or, indeed, for the Department to think that I am attacking it. I am well aware of the work done by the DHSS, how necessary it is and how well it is done in the circumstances; but we need a major change and I think that the abolition of the DHSS should be part of it.

I believe the House knows that over a number of years I have given a great deal of attention to the idea of a tax-credit scheme. I do not now think that "tax-credit scheme" is a very good name. I prefer to call it the "basic income guarantee" or possibly, as a slogan, "The BIG idea".

The question has been raised in a number of quarters lately whether it is time for a new Beveridge report. We need to reconsider the work done by Lord Beveridge. He was a great pioneer in his time, but the thinking that went into his report was, broadly speaking, of a pre-war kind. I believe that we have reached a stage where we want to go over all those issues again. What, indeed, are the issues that we would have to go over if a new Beveridge study were initiated? The principal issue is this: are social benefits to be put on a universal basis, or should they be selective? Some of the benefits that are provided at present are on a universal basis. Child benefit is the most obvious one, but public education and health are also largely universal benefits; and selective benefits, such as supplementary benefit, seem to be unpopular and increasingly difficult to administer fairly.

If we moved to a general acceptance that social benefits should be put on a universal basis, we should have to answer a major question: for those with higher incomes or resources, how do we withdraw spending power so that we do not place on society the colossal burden of giving large support to people who plainly do not need it? Should we withdraw spending power from such people by withdrawing their entitlement to the basic benefits, or should we do it by tax? That is the question that a new Beveridge would have to study.

The question has a big impact on families at the lower end of the scale, not only on the amount of money that they may have to spend, the way in which they make their plans and on their incentive to work, but in particular on their self-respect. We should consider how the many people who depend at one time or another in their lives, sometimes for long periods, on supplementary benefit see themselves. What can we do to help them to retain their self-respect? What can we do to help families under financial strain to hold together?

There are many people in the country who long for a cut in taxation, and there are just as many who want an improvement in benefits. There appears to be a headlong collision between the people who want the Government to move in one direction and those who want them to move in the other. A new Beveridge would have to reconcile those opposite arguments, so that the money drawn from the population in taxation was redistributed and went back in a way that the population as a whole were willing to accept.

I have often heard it argued that if one raises taxation to provide bigger benefits one undermines people's character and independence. It is argued that the existence of a social wage, or support from society as a whole, diminishes the wage earner's standing in some way or makes him relatively less important. It has been argued that it is good to keep one's own earnings because if one keeps one's own money it gives self-respect and independence, whereas drawing social benefits is bad, because it encourages the habit of dependence instead of self-reliance and makes one a second-rate person. In my opinion, that argument is put together from platform points. It does not correspond to the realities of the situation, which are discerned by people of even dim intelligence.

In seeking to reform the institutions of society, one must not fall back on simple slogans and platform points. To regard the independent person who does not need to draw family support or child benefit as a superior citizen is immature. It is a misunderstanding of the relationship between the individual and the community to think in terms of first-class and second-class citizens, the independent and those in receipt of help. For example, if one's gross earnings are one's own money and no one has any entitlement to intrude on it, one has to ask "Why pay taxes at all?"

That is the Poujadist argument—that what someone can make for himself is his own and nobody should take it away from him. In a mature society, something of what we earn has inevitably to go to the community to maintain our institutions. Having accepted that, we must decide how much. The idea that all taxation is an intrusion on personal liberty and an insult is dangerous and extreme.

If services provided by society are a derogation of personal dignity and an unpleasant necessity, one must ask, for instance, "Why do we have a police force?" Would it not be better if every householder said "I shall look after myself and my property and I do not want help from society?" Not many people take that view. Of course, I am projecting the argument in an extreme way to show its lack of soundness. One might even ask "Why do we have Armed Forces?" Should not every man have his own rifle and look after himself? From there one should go on to ask "Why do we have a Government at all? Why do we not have a completely anarchic society in which everyone with self-respect looks after himself?" In Britain, anarchists are not able to influence Governments very much; and when we come down to brass tacks and ask ourselves whether we want universal or selective benefits, we must recognise that the pressure for reductions in taxation and cuts in benefits is ill-considered.

We are gradually moving in the direction favoured by those who want a tax credit scheme, or a basic income guarantee. The first major change that was necessary to implement the basic income guarantee was the amalgamation of the family allowance and the child tax allowance. We had to work for manythat for years, but the prejudices and administrative difficulties were eventually overcome. But we still have a long way to go before child benefit is universal and also sufficient. Child benefit stands at £5.85 a week, but the allowance payable through national insurance is substantially more, at £13.80. The difference is so significant that it has a major effect on personal incentive. People entitled to national insurance benefit who go back to work suffer because the benefit for each of their children is reduced from £13.80 to £5.85. Of course, people with families ask themsleves whether it is worth working when they stand to lose so much. For a child of 16 the supplementary benefit rate is £15.80 a week. Local authority allowances for foster parents are much more. We have a long way to go before we make child benefit both universal and sufficient. The campaign continues.

We are now in the throes of another reform which I and many others have advocated for a long time, which aims to establish a unified housing benefit. The reform is causing difficulties, but it is right, and it is the first stage in the rationalisation of what the community pays to the family in respect of its housing needs. We must extend our thinking to take in the philosophy behind mortgage interest relief, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West referred in his admirable speech, and we must also consider the whole future of local authority housing. We should amalgamate all the forms of housing support that have been built into our tax and benefit systems, so as to provide a single, rational housing allowance for all householders. That is in keeping with the modern age and with the need to reduce public expenditure, which sometimes flows without purpose into housing subsidies.

I also welcome the debate, which is now beginning to hot up, on the future of personal and married allowances. We give a married man a tax concession that is not available to a single man who works in the same job and earns precisely the same wages. It is a primitive concept that one should discriminate in favour of the married man's work. The single man's tax allowance is £1,565 and the married man's tax allowance is £2,445. There is a difference of £880. At 30 per cent. tax, I calculate that that concession is worth about £5 per week after tax.

Why should the married man get that allowance, when it is paid as a result of the needs and expenditure of his wife? Why does that allowance remain part of the relationship between the individual and the State? If we accept that in the twentieth century we have moved towards the emancipation of women and the establishment of universal citizenship and human rights, the allowance that still goes to the man should be going to his wife. I realise that we are starting the same battle that we had when child benefit had to pass from the father to the mother, but not many people now argue that that change was wrong. I accordingly look forward to a successful fight to obtain incomes for wives so that the women instead of their husbands can enjoy their tax benefits.

What happens to the family if women can own their share of the property, including the matrimonial home, can easily go out to work, are entitled to equal pay and can step increasingly easily into casual work because of the breakdown in the iron discipline of the full working week? The family must be held together by the magnetism of natural human relationships, not by financial stringency or by obsolete tax or benefit practices that do not take account of the changes that have taken place in our society. Women must not be treated as second-class citizens because of the continuance of obsolete practices in public administration.

The Government are currently in the middle of considering a complete reform of local authority finance: we must ask ourselves what we want local authorities to do. There are two slogans that we can hold on to as regards their services to the family. First, "Rehabilitation is cheaper than readmission". It must be better to help the family to look after its injured, sick and elderly than to leave it unable to do anything other than return the invalid to full-time care. Local authorities have a large part to play in making it possible for families to stay together, even when coping with a handicapped, sick or elderly person.

My second slogan is "Prevention is cheaper than care". Preventive medicine must be a good public investment, and local authorities must inevitably carry the burden for the good of society as a whole. They should be put in the position to relieve the Government of their burdens, and thus to make savings in total public sector expenditure, by doing things right, instead of insufficiently or late.

In employment we must get away from the idea that an employer has a greater responsibility towards the family man than towards his single male or female employees. When I worked in industry, the firm for which worked was regarded as progressive, but when it came to salary reviews for the junior management the fact that someone had married was very much a consideration in the mind of the department head when deciding that man's earnings for the following year. I do not think that practice is right. The duty of discriminating between the responsibilities of family men and single men should fall on society as a whole and not on their employers.

On the other hand, I should like to see employers opening up much wider the opportunities for part-time and intermittent work, so that women who have responsibilities for their children can nevertheless keep their place in the part of our society where relationships are expressed in terms of cash and can take work that is remunerated in cash and not only by their husbands' gratitude. The status of casual workers, their rights, their obligations to pay tax, and the way in which their tax can be assessed and deducted from them is another of the responsibilities of Government that the House must force on the Administration.

Family policy is not just a matter for the Government or for the individuals themselves; it is a responsibility of hon. Members. In the debate today we have sought to discharge that responsibility. In particular, I express my gratitude and appreciation to my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West, who has won the respect of hon. Members in all parts of the House for his campaign.

12.56 pm

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett (Stockport, North)

I listened with great interest to the hon. Member for Kensington (Sir B. Rhys Williams). It is refreshing to hear a Conservative Member propounding Socialist policies and ideas. It is perhaps sad that he does not grab the headlines or get many of his hon. Friends to listen to him.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) on tabling the motion and on his speech in introducing it. It is a rather sad reflection on the House of Commons that we have to have a debate on family policy as a result of an hon. Member winning the House of Commons raffle, whereas the Government can find two days next week to discuss the Falklands. It would be a far better use of House of Commons time if we debated family policy in prime time, rather than on a Friday, when it is often difficult for hon. Members to be here because of constituency commitments or even commitments to their own families.

It is fairly obvious why the Government were not prepared to give prime time for this sort of debate. The reason is that they have done so much damage and destruction to family life in their three and a half years in office. I suspect that that is why the hon. Member for Woolwich, West could not table a motion with a few more teeth in it.

When the Minister replies, he ought to answer several urgent questions on matters which are dramatically affecting family life. I draw attention to what is happening in supplementary benefit offices, and particularly in the eight offices where there is an industrial dispute. I understand that in those areas no benefit is being paid out. An extra statutory payment from the Exchequer is being made, and it does not take family circumstances into account. The problems have been piling up week after week and the Government have a duty to tell the House what they intend to do. A large number of people who should get benefit from those offices are in very great difficulty with Christmas approaching and with considerable arrears of benefit due to them.

The Government, with the extra statutory payments, should make a double payment of benefit next week. The Minister ought to make a statement to the House today or on Monday. If hon. Members do not get the answers, I am sure that they will return to the issue next week and press the Government further.

There is also the problem of all the other benefit offices where there are not the proper facilities to deal with the vastly increased number of claims. The staff are grossly overworked and rushed off their feet. It is very difficult for them to treat the claimants with the sympathy and care that they ought to be getting. We need a statement from the Government on what they will do about it. With 3½ million people unemployed, the Government are not prepared to employ a few extra people in the benefit offices to alleviate the hardship of families.

The Government ought to be telling us when they will start to increase child benefit so that it will reach a realistic sum, rather than merely trying to keep pace with inflation, as it has failed to do. Child benefit must be raised as a deliberate Government policy to make it a larger proportion of total benefit.

The hon. Member for Anglesey (Mr. Best) challenged the Minister about his advice about Christmas presents to those in receipt of supplementary benefit. The hon. Gentleman said that one of his constituents could not find the money to buy a Christmas present for her child. That problem is suffered by many people. It should be a basic family right that people may give tokens of respect and affection at times such as Christmas. This will be a difficult period for many of those who receive supplementary benefit. When will the Government do something about the 5 per cent. abatement of unemployment benefit? When will they allow the long-term unemployed to receive the long-term supplementary benefit rate? If they do something about those matters, people may have a little more money with which to buy presents. How much would the Minister expect a married man with two children to be able to spend on Christmas this year if the whole family existed on benefits? He would find it difficult to justify any figure.

Many hon. Members referred to the family court. The Government's argument is that such a court would cost too much, but they should consider the matter carefully. Such courts would save money, because at present some people must have recourse to the courts repeatedly to obtain the maintenance due to them.

Will the Government give us some information about what they are doing for the young unemployed? Enormous strains are caused to family life by youth unemployment, because 16 and 17-year-olds are rather reluctant to put up with the restraints of the family. They wish increasingly to be independent, but the problems of growing up are magnified by the lack of jobs and future prospects. Their frustrations build up in the family and can cause much damage, especially to the family that cares for younger children and for the elderly. The Government must have a positive policy of finding jobs for the young.

The Government must also consider young couples who wish to start families. I am depressed by the number of young married couples who are searching for work, who then decide to have a child and who must then search for a home. The Government are giving no help to those people.

Several hon. Members have mentioned the Government's policy towards the elderly. In Britain there are about 9 million people over the retirement pension age, about 2 million of whom live on their own, having outgrown their families, or having had no children. They are outside the family circle. I could talk at some length about how we should try to find substitute families for those people, but this is not the right time. Some people have been cut off from their families because they have moved to other parts of Britain or other parts of the world. Some others have fallen out with their families. However, many elderly people are supported by their families.

Out of the 9 million total, many elderly people still give far more support to their families than they take back from them. They play a key role in child minding, helping and sustaining the family and sometimes just being a person to whom the family can talk. However, many other elderly people are not given the chance to contribute in the way that they would wish to family life. We should do much more to allow them to offer their skills both to their families and to others.

How much help can the Government and the community give those who find it increasingly difficult to support an elderly relative? The strain of looking after an elderly relative is a major problem for many families and it is unfortunate that we give them such little support. The number of people aged over 75 in our community is growing rapidly. Between the 1971 census and the 1981 census the number of people over 75 and under 80 in Stockport increased by 875, which was about a 20 per cent. increase. There were 500 more people aged between 80 and 85, which was a 15 per cent. increase. There were 565 more people over 85, which was an 18 per cent. increase. This meant that there were about 2,000 more people aged over 75 in Stockport. That increase more or less mirrors the figures for the United Kingdom.

I believe that the most serious problem for the elderly is senile dementia. The Government estimate that about 500,000 people are suffering from moderate or severe senile dementia. This may result merely in forgetfulness, but for many the results are much more serious. It may mean a loss of faculties, incontinence or the tendency to ramble. In many instances those suffering from senile dementia cannot communicate with others in a way that those others can understand. They become increasingly rejected by those who are trying to look after them and they are often rejected by the community.

Those suffering from senile dementia are often completely out of touch with the world in which they live. Those caring for them find them walking about the house or demanding to do things at unreasonable hours and liable to behave as they did 20 or 30 years ago. It is extremely distressing for someone caring for an elderly person suddenly to find that the elderly person no longer recognises them, or ascribes to them a different name or different personality. Having lived in the household for 10 or 15 years, the elderly person may suddenly demand to go "home", referring to a place where he or she lived 20 or 30 years ago. Sometimes these people will demand to get out of bed and suddenly, with great physical strength, push their way out of the household, causing the family to have to restrain them and bring them back. It is extremely difficult for a family to cope with these problems.

Very few have much understanding of the problem except those who have experienced it. The problem of caring for the elderly slowly grows on a family. It slowly becomes acute. This is in great contrast to the problems of dealing with children. A birth is exciting for the family and friends. They all rally round and provide help. A family that is caring for a relative who is suffering from acute senile dementia finds that the problem creeps up on it. No one appreciates how serious the problem is until it is acute. Therefore, family and friends are much less willing to offer help. There is also a lack of help from neighbours, who also do not appreciate the seriousness of the problem.

Most local authorities have experienced cuts and have certainly not been allowed enough extra money to meet the growing problems of the elderly. There is a lack of facilities and help from local councils. Individuals often have to beg for help but they are still refused it. Very often local councils fail to provide simple assistance such as laundry services for the elderly who are incontinent or extra home helps for the family. They could well provide more services for the elderly who are blind or deaf. Some good authorities provide these services but far too many do not.

There is also the problem of the lack of hospital beds. If an old person who is creating a major strain on the family can go into hospital or an old people's home for a short period, that can give the family relief from the problem. Too often the family must beg and plead for a bed. A bureaucratic demand is made that a form should be signed promising that the family will take back the elderly person at the end of a fortnight or a month. Of course the family wants to take the elderly person back because he is part of the family. Equally, when the family faces a crisis and wants to send an elderly person to hospital, it does not like the bureaucratic approach. The tragedy is that there are nothing like enough hospital beds to assist the family that is caring and coping.

Increasingly in my constituency an elderly person is allowed into hospital only when the strain on the family has been so great that the health of the person who has been caring for the elderly person suddenly breaks, so the elderly person has to be admitted into hospital. It is tragic that, when so much strain is placed on the family, it is only when the health of another member of the family breaks that the elderly person goes into hospital. A relatively young constituent of mine died from the strain of looking after an elderly relative, which could have been relieved if the local authority had let the elderly person into hospital or an old people's home.

An increasing problem is physical abuse of the elderly, not by someone outside but by someone within the family. In 1978–79 a Select Committee considered physical violence within the family, violence between husbands and wives and child abuse. When the Select Committee was completing its report, I argued strongly that it would be logical to carry on and look at physical abuse of the elderly by caring relatives. I was told by many members of the Select Committee, and Ministers, that that was not a problem. It did not exist. There were no instances of elderly people being abused by their caring relatives.

That is a little like the position 20 years ago when people said that child abuse was not a problem. Now we have managed to convince people that there is a problem. We have suddenly discovered that child abuse by the caring family is a major problem. The same is happening with the abuse of the elderly by caring relatives.

At long last, Ministers and others are beginning to admit that the problem exists. I have a series of parliamentary answers in which Ministers have said that the problem exists. They say that there is research evidence for it and that people are starting to carry out research to see what can be done. One of the Ministers' replies said that, the greater the dependency of the elderly person, the more likely the physical abuse. That is an instance of the member of the family being driven beyond any possible relief by the pressures, so he ends up physically abusing the elderly person.

I realise that this matter is difficult for the Government. I plead with them to issue guidelines to local authorities and doctors on how to deal with the problem. In an answer recently, a Minister refused to do that. The problem is serious. Doctors say "Relatives threaten us that they will not look after a person or will physically abuse him or increase his drug dosage to get that person into hospital." With the shortage of beds, consultant geriatricians resist that blackmail.

The Government must start giving the local community physicians and geriatricians some guidance. They must start providing money so that families who have cared year after year for elderly relatives receive assistance before they reach breaking point and start physical abuse.

The Government must also start to give more guidance to other groups of people. I asked the Home Office what guidance it was giving to the police, who are often reluctant to become involved with families. When elderly people are physically abused, the police should be involved. Someone should give them guidance. They seem to have little knowledge of what they should do at the moment.

Time does not allow me to deal with the many other issues. We need an urgent commitment by the Government to support families caring for the elderly, and I hope that the Minister will assure the House that the Government intend to do far more for families generally than they have in the past three and a half years.

1.15 pm

Mr. Derek Foster (Bishop Auckland)

I am especially glad to follow the powerful contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett), who is respected throughout the House for his interest and expertise in these matters.

Cynics might observe that the only policy of Governments towards families is to heap insupportable burdens upon them, blame them for failing to cope and then, with much wringing of hands, watch their demise. Yet politicians of varying hues have fallen over themselves to claim a monopoly of support for the family. At the Tory Party conference in 1977, the present Prime Minister declared: We are the party of the family". In 1978, the Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer described his Budget as a family Budget. With such top-level white-hot political concern, why are 4 million households still living in poverty and why is the real value of financial support to families lower now than it was in the 1950s?

The hon. Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) deserves and has received the thanks of the whole House for raising this issue in an excellent speech and resumé of family policy. One must ask, however, what claim the Conservative Party has to describe itself as the "party of the family". When seeking to reduce public expenditure on essential services, it is highly convenient to suggest that the family or the community should take over the Government's responsibilities. The hon. Gentleman will recall that the Conservative Party came to power with promises to galvanise us by cutting taxes and to eliminate waste from the public sector without reducing services. Since then, however, the burden of taxation has increased, as has public expenditure as a percentage of gross domestic product.

When the Government realised that public spending could not be reduced without cutting services, they claimed that it would be more cost-effective for the family, the community or the voluntary organisations to fill the gap. Social needs are being created faster than they can be met, especially under the present Government, and families, communities and voluntary organisations certainly have a part to play in partnership with the Government. At a time of deep recession, however, when the resources of families and voluntary organisations are shrinking fast, to offload Government responsibility in that way is breathtakingly callous.

The hon. Member for Woolwich, West initiated today's debate To call attention to family policy". But do the Government have a family policy? If so, it seems to have eluded most hon. Members. More fundamentally, although many lament the demise of family life, we must ask what the Government know about families. How strong is our information base? In 1979 the general household survey showed that the working husband with a wife and two children at home made up only about one-fifth of all families. The majority of households contained only one or two people at most. Just over one-quarter of all households contained four or more people, including children.

Therefore, if the extended family disappeared long ago, it appears that the nuclear family has been shrinking, too. We know that cohabitation has increased, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) said, the divorce rate has increased—speeding up sixfold between 1960 and 1980. Almost 1 million families now have only one parent. Those represent half the poor families and half the homeless families in Britain. We must also remember that 85 per cent. of those one-parent families are headed by women.

The greatest change in family life, referred to by the hon. Member for Belper (Mrs. Faith), has taken place outside the home. By the end of the 1970s three-fifths of married women under 60 went out to work. That, it might be thought, would reduce the burden of unemployment on families. However, unemployed men are the least likely to have working wives. If the pattern of family life is diverse, so too is the range of services impinging upon families from a variety of agencies. The Treasury, the Department of Health and Social Security, the Department of the Environment, the Department of Education and Science, and district and county councils are all involved. Each agency finds it formidable enough to co-ordinate and target its activities. Knowing the problems of departmentalism in local government, and knowing, too, the insensitivity and unresponsiveness of bureaucracies at all levels, co-ordinating such a variety of agencies and targeting their services to such a diverse client group is a daunting task. Yet a family policy, or even a family perspective, requires it.

How should we proceed? We need a secure base of statistics on families. Interdepartmental and interdisciplinary study groups would be a great help. Reference has been made to family impact statements which, I understand, are analogous to environmental impact statements. It would be useful if those could be made. It will be recalled that the Secretary of State for Industry promised such statements at the 1977 Tory Party conference, but no doubt they would now be too embarrassing for the Government to make.

Such statements might be followed by a family impact analysis, which is merely an examination to see whether the objectives set out in the statement have been achieved. Perhaps the most major advance would be for the Treasury and the Department of Health and Social Security jointly to study and plan the effect of changes in the tax and benefit systems upon families. It must be said that the Budget is a major barrier to rational planning and its preparation shows a callous disregard for poor families. The Treasury produced calculations of the effect of the Budget on model families—those with mortgages—but not on poor families.

Poverty is one of the most daunting problems facing families today. The figures show about 4 million households living in poverty and a further 3 million on the margins of poverty. There have been many changes which suggest that the number has increased substantially since 1979. An obvious factor is rising unemployment. Another is the number of one-parent families. We do not know how many people now live in, or on the margins of, poverty as a result of the changes. It is known, however, that many more people now depend on supplementary benefit. At the end of 1979, 4,750,000 people were dependent on supplementary benefit. By May this year, the number had risen to 6.5 million. Who are these people? It is known that those with children are more likely to be poor than those without children. These families contain the majority of people who live in poverty.

In 1979, there were more than one million families in poverty or on the margins of poverty. More than 2,250,000 children were living in those families. Low pay is another factor that causes families to live in poverty. In 1979, just under 2.5 million people in working households lived in poverty or on low incomes. The majority of these households—seven out of 10—were families with children. There would be four times as many working families with incomes below the supplementary benefit level were it not for the earnings of women.

One of the greatest factors causing problems and breakdown in family life is that of unemployment. There are over 3 million registered unemployed. The number of unemployed is perhaps over 4 million if those failing to register are also counted. Over 1 million have been out of work for more than 12 months. In the Northern region, which is sinking under an avalanche of job destruction, unemployment means long-term poverty.

Even in 1979, more than 1 million people lived in households in, or on the margins of, poverty as a result of unemployment. The social security system discriminates against the unemployed. Unemployment benefit is paid for a year only. In addition, the real value of unemployment benefit has been cut since 1979. The cumulative effect, by November this year, was a cut in benefit of £5.55 a week for a family with two children. This cut has led to a massive increase in the number of unemployed people who have had to claim supplementary benefit. By the beginning of this year, more than half of the unemployed were receiving supplementary benefit.

The supplementary benefit scheme also discriminates against the unemployed. After a year on supplementary benefit, a higher long-term rate of benefit is paid. But the unemployed aged under 60 are not entitled to this rate. As a result, since November 1982, an unemployed person receives £7 a week less and a couple £10.60 a week less than other claimants.

Why are so many people living in poverty? National insurance benefits and supplementary benefits are too low. The social security system relies too much on means-tested benefits. Many people are still low-paid and have to pay tax on very low earnings. Child benefit is too low.

The hon. Member for Kensington (Sir B. Rhys Williams) referred to the Beveridge report and talked of a new Beveridge. The national insurance scheme was to be the basis of the Welfare State. National insurance benefits were supposed to provide for the needs of the unemployed, the sick and the retired and their dependants. Supplementary benefit was to be a safety net for a diminishing number of people who were not protected by the national insurance scheme.

In 1948 fewer than 1½ million people were dependent on supplementary benefit. By May of this year the figure was 6½ million. That has happened because some national insurance benefits are lower than supplementary benefit, and people need to claim supplementary benefit as well. Some people are not entitled to national insurance benefit, because they have not paid enough in contributions. It has occurred also because there are no national insurance benefits for one-parent families and because unemployment benefit can be claimed for a year only and then supplementary benefit must be claimed.

The Government have relied too much on means-tested benefits and tried to solve the poverty problem in that way. They have failed because many people do not claim the benefits to which they are entitled. To obtain means-tested benefit, one must show that one is on a low income. Some people do not like to do that. Some people do not know about the benefits and others do not know that they are entitled to them. It is complicated to apply for them. Only about 70 per cent. of people eligible claim supplementary benefit and rent and rate rebates. About 50 per cent. only of those eligible claim family income supplement. Even in 1979 there was £355 million of supplementary benefit which was not being claimed by people entitled to it.

Hon. Members have referred to the poverty trap. Many poor working families are caught in the poverty trap or plateau. As their earnings rise, they pay more in tax and national insurance contributions and lose some or all of their means-tested benefits such as family income supplement, free school meals and housing benefits. The Government are giving benefits to families with one hand and taking them away with the other. Many families are in that position because people are taxed at lower earnings levels than they used to be. In 1955 families with two children would not pay tax until their earnings were equal to average earnings. Today they start to pay tax at half average earnings. However, four-fifths of those who claim family income supplement also pay tax.

Since the Government came to power almost every change in taxation and benefit policy has deepened the poverty trap. There has been a decline in the value of the tax threshold, a cut in the real value of child benefit, increased reliance on family income supplement, an ending of the lower rate tax band, an increase in the price of school meals, increased national insurance contributions, rent and rates and the increased taper in housing benefits.

Many hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, North and the hon. Member for Anglesey (Mr. Best), have said that child benefit is too low. From November this year child benefit is worth £5.85 a week, but it is still worth less than when the Government were elected in 1979. In 1955 tax-paying families received more financial help, as has been said, through child tax and family allowances than they do now through the child benefit which replaced them.

Over time the amount of tax and national insurance contributions that families with children pay has increased much more than that paid by those without children. Since 1960 the proportion of income paid in tax and national insurance by a couple on average earnings without children has doubled, but for a couple on average earnings with two young children it has increased fourfold.

In summary on this section, I can do no better than to quote the fine sentiments of the present Secretary of State for Industry, again in 1977, which must have been a vintage year at the Tory Party conference. The right hon. Gentleman said that his party was committed to child benefit: Firstly because that is the way to restore the position of families. Secondly it is the best way to ease the poverty trap. Thirdly it is the best way to help poor families in work. Fourthly it is the best way to reduce the nonsense of people being much better off out of work. Fifthly it is the best way of reducing the dependence of families on means-tested benefits". What a pity the Government have forgotten those promises by failing even to protect the real value of child benefit.

I come to matters other than family poverty—pre-school provision, for instance. We have to say that, even though there has been some increase in the provision of nursery education, the Government are still woefully short of the target set by the present Prime Minister in her 1972 White Paper "A Framework for Expansion".

The directors of social services in their evidence to the Select Committee this year referred to a considerable cutback in services helping families with very young children … more day nurseries closing than any other institutions … an increase of almost 40 per cent. in cases where fuel debt is causing serious family disruption". Regarding the elderly and disabled, to whom most care is still given by families, there is substantial evidence of cuts in aids, adaptations, telephones and holidays.

Housing has been mentioned by my hon. Friends the Members for Tooting (Mr. Cox) and for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Brown). We learn from Shelter's newly published 1982 campaign report: More people are becoming homeless each year because of domestic disputes: more because of rent arrears: more because of mortgage arrears: more because of eviction by private landlords. This chronic shortage of houses will get worse in the next few years. Yet, under this Government, there have been unprecedented cutbacks in the provision of new and renovated houses.

In different circumstances this catalogue of the Government's callous indifference to poor families across several Government Departments could be prolonged almost indefinitely, but under such an onslaught of increasing poverty and need it is madness to believe that further burdens can be shifted from the Government to poor families, many of which are breaking under the strain.

There is no cheap and easy way forward. The Government must accept that only through public spending, even if sometimes in partnership with families, voluntary organisations and communities, can major progress be made. Why do the Government not now admit that their economic and social policies have failed, even though it is now too late to get much of the nation back to work before a general election? Surely, in the brave new world of the chip and "ET", it must be possible to end this shameful waste of human talent and apply it to human need.

Of course, the Government cannot solve all the problems. Only by engaging all the resourcefulness and skill of all our people can we succeed. However, Government action and spending must be the catalyst.

1.40 pm

The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg)

I have listened with great interest to a wide-ranging debate. I shall start, as many other hon. Members did, with congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) on his choice of subject. When I went to help him in his famous by-election, I did not think that he would make me sit here for several hours listening to what has been a most interesting debate. He has a well-deserved reputation, for both his concern and hard work, in bringing these issues to the attention of both the public and the Government. His speech set the tone for some interesting and thought-provoking speeches.

My hon. Friend rightly said that the majority of families do not have problems. We must not allow ourselves to be mesmerised by the families that have problems—admittedly difficult problems—into thinking that they are the norm. My hon. Friend spoke about the elderly, and that theme was continued by the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Brown), among others. We must try to get away from the all-too-prevalent attitude that all the elderly are the same and that all the elderly want to be looked after by the community.

I had the privilege of leading the United Kingdom delegation to the recent world assembly on ageing in Vienna. The theme that I took was that in the past decades we have added years to life. Now we have to add life to years and make people realise that the elderly have an enormous contribution to make, not just in baby-sitting and looking after the house while someone goes to the cinema or theatre, but within the community as a whole. That is the message that we should all try to convey, and I am cretain that that message would be greatly appreciated by the elderly.

The hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) rightly concentrated on the need to prevent the break-up of marriages. He said that we had to examine and cure the causes, and not just spend our time on the symptoms. I agree. His diagnosis clearly shows that he could have had an equally successful career in the medical profession, instead of the legal profession, had he so chosen. His diagnosis was perfect, and his bedside manner is also known to be perfect. However, I parted company from the hon. Gentleman when he brought into the debate the subject of the Greenham Common women, who are certainly misguided, and who are doing great harm to the efforts that we are making to obtain multilateral disarmament. I wish that they realised that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Anglesey (Mr. Best), who apologised for not being here now because he has to make the long journey to his constituency, argued cogently that, while we have to do what my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West said and see what can be done to alleviate the distress and difficulties of people who have problems in their families, we still need to be certain that we are talking of a minority, not a majority. We cannot stress that enough.

The hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch concentrated much of his remarks on the interaction of housing and the family. I shall say a word about that later, as I shall about his somewhat weird prospectus. I have known the hon. Gentleman for a long time. His heart was not in that catalogue of rubbish of the SDP's policy. He knows that, and I shall try to take that policy apart slightly when I come to that part of my speech. I know that he has more sense than to believe much of what is being put forward in his name. The hon. Gentleman can press me as much as he likes about the need to concentrate on prevention. We are at one about that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mrs. Faith) made an interesting intervention. She said that seven out of eight families live in harmony, with no problems, and she rightly warned of the dangers involved in the State intervening too much in family life. It is interesting to note that after the hubbub of a week ago not one woman Member of the Labour Party or SDP is present to talk about families. It is noteworthy that when we are discussing something deep and important women Labour Members are not interested enough to attend.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett

Cheap.

Mr. Finsberg

Cheap, but true.

Mr. Abse

The statutory woman is brought to the Chamber from time to time, but it ill-becomes the Minister to comment on the absence of women or any hon. Member after the week that we have just had, mainly because of disorders in the Conservative Party, and with the imminence of Christmas.

Mr. Finsberg

As in law, there are two sides to the argument. One pays counsel highly to argue one's case, and someone else pays highly for the opposite argument to be put. The fact is that no women Members of the Labour Party could be bothered to be here.

Mrs. Faith

I do not want anyone to think that I was brought to the Chamber to participate. It has been a worthwhile morning and I would not have missed it. I came willingly and happily.

Mr. Finsberg

My hon. Friend is one of the most difficult people to cajole or persuade to do anything that she does not want to do.

I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir B. Rhys Williams) for not being present when he made his speech. I understand that he wants to get rid of me and my Department. He will not expect me to commend that, but his argument is interesting. I shall pass on to my colleagues his BIG idea on basic income guarantee. Britons like alliteration, so when contemplating a new Beveridge report a Brandon report might be the answer. We shall consider my hon. Friend's proposition.

The hon. Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett) intervened to speak about Christmas gifts. He said that supplementary benefit is stopped if Christmas gifts are received.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett

I was talking about cash gifts.

Mr. Finsberg

Cash gifts of £100 can be received before anything is taken back. Not many people, even in social class I, receive £100 cash gifts.

The Christmas bonus is paid to all supplementary pensioners, to a long list of people, including retirement pensioners and widows, and to people in receipt of attendance allowance, invalidity pension, unemployment supplement, war disablement, war widows pension and industrial injury benefit.

It is a long list and it is right that it should be. However, I should not like anyone to think that giving a cash gift for Christmas of £5, £10 or £20 to a child whose family is on supplementary benefit means that that supplementary benefit will be reduced. It is important that that fact should be on the record.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett

I was making two points. First, I know of constituents who have been given that amount of money for Christmas. Unfortunately, they took the cash instead of insisting on a gift in kind and were caught by the regulations. Some of my constituents have been asked where they got the money from for Christmas. That problem probably affects many people, and they feel upset if someone asks them where they got the money from to buy presents for their children and food for the Christmas dinner.

Mr. Finsberg

I must make it clear that a cash gift of £100 does not attract a reduction. The figure was increased from £20 to £100. I cannot see anything wrong with asking where the money comes from. Every hon. Member has to answer that question when filling in his annual income tax return. Therefore, it should apply no more and no less to others.

The hon. Member for Stockport, North then spoke about the real problem of senile dementia. As he knows, sadly a growing number of people well below the age of 60 suffer from what is still called senile dementia. It is important to try to give some respite to those who look after them. Like the hon. Gentleman, I am glad that a growing number of beds are available in geriatric wards and in voluntary establishments. That can give the family a break of two or three weeks. I join the hon. Gentleman in hoping that that movement will continue.

The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Foster) led for the Opposition. His predecessor is an old and close friend of mine, Jim Boyden. We worked together on the Select Committee for nine years and I have the utmost admiration and respect for him. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will follow in Jim's tradition and achieve the same respect that Jim enjoyed in the House. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his first appearance at the Dispatch Box. I wish him well and I wish him also a decade-long tenure of office in Opposition.

The hon. Gentleman painted an unduly gloomy picture based on assumptions that were not accurate. I shall mention the points on which he was less than fair to us. I have been able to check one of his figures, and he was wrong. The trouble with figures is that one does not always use the same statistical base. The hon. Gentleman will correct me if I am wrong, but I think he said that in the 1979 household survey about 20 per cent. of all families were shown to be family units. According to my information, the figure in 1981 for all households formed by married couples with dependent children was 32 per cent. I doubt whether there could have been a 12 per cent. increase betwen 1979 and 1981, but I shall check and write to the hon. Gentleman. I am not accusing him of trying to give the House false information, but I want to check the figures to see whether there is any meeting point between us.

Mr. Foster

I gave the statistic for the working husband whose wife and two children were at home. That is slightly different.

Mr. Finsberg

I feared that we were making different points. Both may well be relevant.

The hon. Gentleman was a little political when he referred to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and her 1972 White Paper. He chose to overlook certain events between 1972 and 1982. I refer, for example, to the savage cuts that the former Chancellor of the Exchequer made at the behest of the International Monetary Fund. It has taken the country a long time to recover from them. Perhaps the aims of the 1972 White Paper would have been achieved if a Conservative Government had been returned to office in 1974. He and I might wish to argue about that.

The debate has been a steeplechase up and down Whitehall, with an understandable and healthy disregard for the fences that divide the responsibilities of different Ministers and different Departments. It is clear that there is very little activity by the Government which does not affect families in some way, directly or indirectly, even though only a small fraction of that activity can ever be specifically aimed at the family as such. I want to try to reflect some of that diversity.

Although I shall inevitably concentrate on the responsibilities of my own Department, I want to try to demonstrate that, while for many people the word "family" is merely a subject of rhetoric, for the Government it is a subject of real practical concern and—within the limits of what Government can do and should do—achievement. I say within the limits of what Government can do, for not only are there practical restraints on what any Government can afford to do, but, as I shall explain later, there are real issues of principle about the limits to what the Government and public agencies should do concerning the most private and intimate aspects of family life—the very point that my hon. Friend the Member for Belper made in her speech.

We have to be clear what we are talking about when we refer to the family. The conventional image of a mother and father, married and in their twenties, parted only by death, and bringing up their average of 1.9 children—perhaps that is where "ET" started—and with a set of grandparents, uncles and aunts hovering benevolently on the fringes, continues as the generally perceived idea of the family. In its universal acceptance, that image has remained surprisingly resistant to the tide of statistics on, for example, divorce—about which the hon. Member for Pontypool and my hon. Friend the Member for Anglesey spoke—which suggest gloomily that that comforting picture has only a spurious reality in television commercials for detergents and frozen food. As always, I think the House will agree that the real picture is far more complex.

It is unarguable that when we talk about the family it is not a precise or a simple concept. It has many facets, some of them subtle; it does not always submit to easy generalisations. Above all, it is an evolving concept which responds to a variety of pressures and developments. Some of those pressures and developments, such as taxes and benefits, are generally agreed to be subject to Government control. Others are matters where there would be general agreement that the Government and the State should keep out. I have in mind matters such as married couples' control of their own fertility and the quiet revolution since the war in methods of contraception.

In such a complex interplay of factors, it is important that we should be clear about what the Government can or cannot—or should or should not—do. The great majority would accept that it is an essential function of Government to secure the defence of the nation, to conduct foreign policy, to protect the currency, to promote trade and to maintain the liberty and safety of the subject. In a modern society, few would dispute that the Government must ensure the provision of social services such as health and education and that there is a means of ensuring a reasonable standard of living for those who, without State intervention, would fall below that level.

It is also the duty of the State to uphold the law, and the law itself must surely be derived from an underlying moral code—what people generally believe to be right—for without that the law will not command respect and will probably slide into tyranny. But it is surely another question altogether to suggest that the Government should assume responsibility for, or even try directly to influence, how people live their lives together.

Of course, that does not mean that in the privacy of their own homes people should be able to flout the principles that govern more public behaviour. Children and—as the hon. Member for Stockport, North said—elderly people must be protected from abuse and corruption. Wives must have remedies against physical assault, as must everyone else. The law must protect the community from outrages against public decency. However, those are the limits of the State's interest in our private and family lives—limits determined by the risk of harm to others and outrages to the values of the community.

Within those broad limits people should be free to live their lives and to develop relationships with each other entirely as they choose. Within those limits it should be no business of the State or of officialdom to pry into the details of family life. "An Englishman's home is his castle" is not so much an affirmation of property rights as a sturdy claim that, behind one's front door, one's family life should be free from prying and interference by the State.

The family has been an essential stronghold of personal liberty against totalitarian regimes, which in the past have done their worst to undermine private family life. As Ferdinand Mount pointed out in his recent book "The Subversive Family", the family has been one of the true sources of individual freedom against various corporate agencies and interfering dogmatists of all kinds. He argued that in the past there had been a surprisingly wide spread of pundits with the same long-standing interest in downgrading the family.

Marxists may attack the family as a bourgeois instrument of oppression. Academics may claim that the small modern family is a freak, unknown at other times or in other parts of the world and that advancement lies in alternative social organisations, but the fact remains, as the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland said, that most people aspire to the nuclear family—parents living together with their children—and that remains at the heart of our notions of family life.

That principle brings us face to face with an apparent paradox. On the one hand, the family is both an expression of individual freedom and a safeguard for the individual to live his life as he chooses. As such, it is an area where only fools rush in to interfere, and where the law, the State and the authorities must tread with extreme care. On the other hand, the family, especially the family headed by a stable and lasting marriage of the parents, remains a fundamental building block of modern society. It is the best way to ensure that children receive the care that they need and that they develop into effective and mature adults. It is the best way to ensure that the values and culture of our society pass from one generation to the next. Obviously, therefore, Governments must try to ensure that those essential features of family life endure and survive.

However, the paradox that the Government must not interfere in the subtle, personal and private aspects of family life, and yet must ensure that family life flourishes, is more apparent than real. Just as freedom cannot exist without order, so family life must depend on the Government creating the conditions in which it can flourish.

Marriage is at the heart of family life and I shall say something about marriage as an institution enshrined in law and the Government's approach to matrimonial law. In Britain today, marriage has seldom been more popular. The propensity for marriage increased steadily in the decades up to 1970. The small decrease since then is explained partly by the fact that people are marrying older—a welcome trend, since teenage marriages are especially vulnerable to breakdown. I hope that on his train journey home today my hon. Friend the Member for Anglesey will take comfort from that fact.

We need have little worry about people's willingness to marry. What causes much more anxiety is the trend in recent years for marriages to break down. Divorce statistics show an alarming trend—a tenfold increase between the mid-1930s and 1970, and a doubling since the implementation in 1971 of the Divorce Reform Act 1969, to which the hon. Member for Pontypool referred.

We must be careful not to draw the wrong conclusions from the figures. Divorce represents the legal cancellation of a marriage, but generally it is the legal conclusion of the distressing process of the emotional and economic collapse of the marriage. It is this collapse which has the blighting effect on children, family finances and the well-being of the partners. However, eventual divorce may, strangely enough, bring some order into chaos. The problem is separation and the failure of marriage, not divorce.

Mr. Abse

Will the Minister tell the House when the interdepartmental committee dealing with conciliation, upon which officials from his Department are represented, is likely to complete its report? More importantly, may we have an assurance that he will make it known that it is the will of the House that the report should be published?

Mr. Finsberg

I shall ensure that the hon. Gentleman's remarks and his earlier ones are drawn to the attention of my right hon. Friend. I am sure that he will write to the hon. Gentleman to give him a view on publication and, after checking with the committee, when it is likely to complete its work.

Some people say that easier divorces cause people to put less of an effort into making their marriages work. That may he true in a few cases, but I suggest that there is a deeper underlying social trend that was not markedly affected by the change in the law in 1971. The Department's figures of the number of one-parent families dependent on supplementary benefit show that up to 1972 it was the separated whose numbers were increasing most rapidly. From 1972 it was divorce that produced that trend. Even if easier divorce is by no means the main cause of marital breakdown, there is a balance to maintain. We must not use the law to force people to remain in a moribund and stressful relationship; neither must we change too much or too soon the body of law that reflects the community's moral preferences. Where that balance lies is a matter for argument, but my personal conviction is that we must be certain about the need for any change before making it. Even then, we should err on the side of caution.

One of the most obvious of the direct activities of the Government in respect of families is social security. I shall deal with matters which are relevant to families with children where the main earner is at work as well as with those which are relevant to families where that is not the case.

For a small minority of working families there is the combined effect of income support benefits, income tax and national insurance contributions. This is the so-called poverty trap. I shall address myself to the relationship between out-of-work and in-work income, which is called the unemployment trap. This leads to the importance that the Government attach to the family as an effective social unit. There are fundamental, social and moral values which only the family can effectively nurture, but these have to be reinforced. The family unit should be supported, where necessary, by appropriate cash benefits as well as by appropriate service provisions.

There is a crucial distinction to be made between appropriate support and the State assessing responsibility and accepting responsibility for matters which should more properly be left to individuals. That is the gravamen of what I said earlier. In the ordering of their financial affairs, no less than in other spheres of their lives, individuals and their families must have choice. Earners must be able to plan their own financial affairs and to make themselves independent as far as they can. The central economic objectives of the Government are crucial in achieving that.

It is right that I should say a word, apart from the general economic background, about social security provision and the co-ordination of tax and social security policies as they affect the family. The economic setting for improvements in social security has been difficult. As the prosperity of the family depends essentially on the prosperity of the nation, it has been essential to arrest the decline in the economy. There is no other effective means of providing the resources that are necessary to support the benefits and services of the Welfare State. In his closing remarks the hon. Member for Bishop Aukland asked when the Government would admit the failure of their economic and social policies. My simple answer is that they will not, because there has not been the failure that he would like to see.

Our policies are the policies on which we were elected to office, having painted a picture to the electorate that things would not be easy and not having promised a millennium in one year. We said that we would be judged at the end of one Parliament. The signs of our success are beginning to show through. The House knows that inflation and interest rates are coming down, productivity is improving, and public borrowing is under firm control. Industry can now compete more effectively in world markets. Those are all signs that the firm foundations that are necessary for sustained growth are being established.

While tackling the major priority of sound money and improved economic performance, the Government have not neglected social security benefits. Supplementary benefit rates have been increased each year under this Administration. Last month they were increased by 11½ per cent., which was in line with a forecast rise in the retail prices index, less housing costs, with an addition of 2 per cent. to make good a previous shortfall. Housing costs were excluded because supplementary benefit claimants are paid their housing costs separately. The forecast rise in the RPI was higher than the actual rise so far. Therefore, that can be seen as a bonus for supplementary benefit claimants. No decision can be made at this stage, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, about the amount by which rates will be increased next November, but clearly we have made progress, and it would be nonsense to suggest otherwise.

The House knows that in 1980 we reformed and improved the supplementary benefit scheme. That is of additional help to nearly all beneficiaries. The help to many families with children was plain. The supplementary benefit scale rates for children were reduced from five to three, giving children under 5 and children aged 11 and 12 higher rates than before. When we took office in 1970, the scale rate for a child under 5 was £4.40. It is now £8.75. The scale rate for a child aged 11 or 12 was £6.55. It is now £13.15. Therefore, we have increased supplementary benefit provision for those children by about 100 per cent. during our Administration. It is important to put that fact on record in the same way as, over and over again, all of us must keep stressing that, far from there having been cuts in the National Health Service, there has been an increase in real terms of 5½ per cent. since the Government came to power.

The Social Democratic Party recently published a document entitled "Attacking Poverty". It claims to provide a master plan—I am always suspicious of master plans—to achieve a whole range of major objectives in social security. The objectives include eliminating poverty—no less—ending the poverty and unemployment traps—although those who wrote the document seem to be somewhat confused about which is which—wholesale simplification of almost the entire social security system, and increased payments to lone parents, pensioners, the unemployed, the sick and disabled. For many years, four of those who are now leading members of the SDP had power to do all those things, so they are very late in discovering how much needs to be done. When they had the chance, they did not do much about it.

The long catalogue produced by the SDP might suggest that Aladdin's lamp has been rediscovered in Limehouse or Wapping. If it has, it certainly has no magic power. At the core of the SDP scheme is what is described as a "basic benefit credit". As I understand it—it is not easy for anyone to understand—the proposed allowances are to cover the entire population, being either paid in cash or included in the calculation of net pay for those in work. It will be withdrawn at a specified income level—roughly 30 per cent. in the pound for single people and 45 per cent. for couples, but that is in addition to income tax and national insurance contributions.

Far from being eliminated, the poverty trap would be made worse by the SDP proposals. Many more families would be brought within its scope and its effect would be substantially worse for many people. Married couples with two children would face a marginal tax rate of more than 80 per cent. over a range of earnings from £41 to £167 per week or, if there are three children, up to £187 per week. About 2½ million families might be affected in that way.

More important, the poverty trap would cease to be theoretical and become savagely practical. Its jaws would snap shut on families from week to week. The SDP proposes that benefit would be calculated, and might often change, from week to week. Forward planning of family expenditure would thus become almost impossible. The mitigating effect of the existing family income supplement due to the 12 months' entitlement period would disappear. Money would certainly be redistributed to some poor families, but at a cost of an additional £440 million per year public expenditure and £5 billion more per year being processed through the benefit system. I should make it clear that those are the SDP figures. The Government believe that they have been substantially underestimated.

It is no wonder that the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch did not have his heart in the SDP proposals. The House respects him for the nine-tenths of his speech that was devoted to a subject that he knows well and cares about passionately, but he would do well to distance himself from the one-tenth that was pie in the sky and not his kind of game at all.

Mr. Ronald W. Brown

The Minister has said that three times. It is not so. It is right that our proposals should be discussed. As every hon. Member who has spoken has made clear, all Governments so far have failed to achieve the results that we want. The Minister may argue that part of our scheme should be reviewed, but he cannot simply cast it out of court, because that is no way forward.

Mr. Finsberg

I know something about the hon. Gentleman's constituency as my mother was born there and I fought two elections there. I believe that he will have great difficulty in convincing people there that there is any sense at all in the SDP plan.

One of the services intended to support and strengthen families and to enable them to exercise responsibility and choice in their lives is family planning. It is now generally accepted that one of the most important factors affecting the happiness and well-being of families is that children should be born at the right time and that there should be no more of them than the couple can cope with. In most cases, effective family planning is the key. Responsible use of contraception enables couples to time and space their families according to their wishes and to avoid a major source of unnecessary financial and other pressures which may be so destructive of family unity.

That is why the Government regard the provision of family planning as such an important part of the NHS. The advice which is provided to some 3½ million people at over 1,700 NHS clinics and by general practitioners makes a major contribution to the well-being of the family. I realise that many people will not, for religious reasons, use modern methods of contraception. Their views must be respected. NHS clinics and general practitioners can provide advice to them on so-called natural methods of family planning. The Department also provides a grant to the Catholic Marriage Advisory Council for the splendid work that it does in providing instruction on those methods. We must be sure that the message is being got over, and that is why we support so strongly the work of the Health Education Council, which does invaluable work in this and many other areas.

We have made it clear that schools should undertake the closest possible consultation and co-operation with parents about the way in which sex education is given in schools. Schools must be sensitive to the wishes of parents and the needs and background of children. We introduced legislation in 1981 which requires local education authorities to publish details of the ways and contexts in which sex education is given in every school. That should enable parents to find out what is provided, and it is an important step forward.

If difficulties arise, schools should be able to resolve them directly with parents. However, if parents are still dissatisfied, they should take up the matter with the local education authority. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent, North (Dr. Boyson) recently asked the Health Education Council to review a book list which it published jointly with the Schools Council which contained books that in our view were quite unsuitable for use in schools. I am glad to say that the Health Education Council has agreed to review that list in the light of complaints which have been received about it.

Towards the end of this year the Health Education Council plans to repeat the advertisements, which appeared in national newspapers and teenage magazines from. February to April 1982, on the prevention of unwanted teenage pregnancies. Those advertisements lean strongly towards supporting young people who need encouragement to resist pressure towards sexual activities for which they do not feel prepared. They recommend that worries about sex should be discussed with parents, doctors, and family planning clinic staff, and point out that casual sex can have serious consequences for both boys and girls. One advertisement states that "No" is still the most effective form of birth control.

The Government attach considerable importance to young people being adequately prepared for the responsibilities of parenthood. That involves much more than instruction about the physical aspects of parenthood, childbirth and child care, important though they are. Prospective parents also need an understanding of the emotional, intellectual and social needs of their children. Many parents also require continuing help and advice after the baby is born to enable them to come to terms with the stresses and demands of their new role.

The benefits of good parenting are generally accepted. On the other hand, inadequate parenting can contribute to many problems relating to children that face the health, education and social services, including child abuse and neglect, truancy and delinquency. As my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West knows, several specific activities in this area are being carried out under DHSS auspices. There are two main programmes of work by the Health Education Council and the National Childrens Bureau, as well as some miscellaneous activities.

If I had to sum up the concept of the family, I would do so in three words—discipline, religion and love: discipline, because it is the character of a child, moulded in the home, which sets the tone for the child's life, and it is imperative that those who have charge of the child in school do nothing to undermine the efforts of parents to bring up children in the way they wish.

Whatever form of religion—Jewish, Christian or Moslem—is followed, all teach one that the world is wider than oneself and that one has responsibilities to other people. We need to make certain that children have a grounding in religion if they are to become part of a family and the family is to have the sort of life that everyone believes necessary.

Love is perhaps the most important of all. The parental love given to the child in the formative years, whether in a one or two-parent family, will enable the child in years ahead to make a contribution to life and not to be a burden on the community and the State.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West on having given the House the chance to discuss a subject that is wide but, at the same time, narrow. The hon. Gentleman has done the House a great service. In the wider world, I hope that those in the media, who enjoy writing up the miseries and horrors of this life, will give equal prominence to the many good things that happen. I doubt it, but that is my hope.

2.26 pm

Mr. Peter Bottomley

I am grateful to the Minister and to colleagues on both sides of the House who have spoken in the debate. The motion is an appropriate one to be discussing close to Christmas. I hope that ways will eventually be found for the House to discuss this type of issue and the specific topics that arise within it in a nonpartisan manner. Party politics matter but trying to get basic cross-party alliance to put matters on political agendas also matters a great deal. What happens in the House helps to promote discussion outside.

I have deliberately not asked the Government today for action. There will be other opportunities for doing so. When discussing the concerns of people in our constituencies, it is by focusing on the family that we find a means of uniting them rather than by driving them apart. It is important that outside bodies should support this kind of discussion and work. I pay a second tribute to the Study Commission on the Family whose booklets over recent years have been remarkably useful. Its opening up of policy issues will become even more valuable in the future. Family Forum, with which I have had a direct link, is a means of providing a link between policy makers and families in promoting essential dialogue.

In the debate on the Black report on 6 December my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services said the Government were still considering "the many different views" on the subject of tax allowance and the married man's allowance, but under any system there would be millions of losers."—[Official Report, 6 December 1982; Vol. 33, c. 613.] What people outside are now saying is that the millions of losers are those caring for children and the cash benefits that they receive. I shall be referring to child benefit on future occasions.

I am grateful for what the Minister said about sex education and family planning. Families can do a great deal to avoid misery by making it plain to their children that family planning is not the right concept until the age of 17, 18 or preferably older. What needs to be discussed is conception control. One of the most effective ways to avoid conception is not to become involved in under-age sexual activity that leads to it.

We have not discussed a Minister for the family. That is right. So many Government Departments are involved in family issues. Family Forum hopes to promote in the next year or two a "family fortnight" once a year, perhaps in July, when outside bodies can examine the family aspect of their own work. There may also be the chance for hon. Members to reflect this in the House.

My final point will be brief. Those in industry and commerce do not understand long points. I wish to stress the vital importance of child benefit. If we wish to get £2 a week into the hands of families with children, it would cost £550 million, through the Government, with obvious public sector borrowing requirement implications. A general increase in the married man's tax allowance would cost over £1,000 million. To try to do it through pay increases would cost £3.7 billion. If industry cannot afford that sum, it had better join the child benefit campaign now.

May I say how grateful I am to everyone who has taken part in this vital debate? I hope that the Government will consider consulting the Opposition and having one or two Supply days to continue debating this vitally important matter. It would give hon. Members an opportunity to try to reach a bipartisan agreement. It is necessary that when people read Hansard they should see that that is the way that we achieve our objectives.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved, That this House recognises the role and influence of families in promoting health, education, behaviour and employment prospects; believes that public policy can be further developed to improve family functioning; notes the impact of public decisions on the needs and resources of families; and believes that measures to reduce avoidable disadvantage, distress and handicap should take account of the family perspective.

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1. SCOTTISH AFFAIRS 40 words
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2. DEFENCE 31 words