“The number one challenge we’ve got in this country today is to strengthen our society. There is no more important way of doing that than strengthening families, and there’s nothing more important to families than the strength of their relationships. That’s why I am so delighted to be giving this year’s lecture for Relate.
“This is your seventieth year. During that time, you’ve helped millions of couples overcome the pressures that relationships can bring. You’ve comforted millions of children – those in care, those still at home – and helped them move on with confidence and hope. You’ve reunited families, and when they can’t be brought back together, you’ve made sure the fall-out is as pain-free as possible. And now through the Relate Institute in Doncaster College you’re making a whole new contribution to strengthening our society and I hope it helps ensure that Relate’s next seventy years are an even greater success.
“Now I know there are some who think politics should stay out of issues like relationships, and stick to apparently more gritty topics like schools, the NHS and budget deficits. I just think that’s incredibly superficial and short-sighted. Our efforts to get schools right are undermined if families are going wrong. We can ease the burden on the NHS if we act on the evidence that people in strong and happy relationships are healthier. And helping people maintain strong relationships is not some fluffy alternative to reducing budget deficits – it is the way to reduce budget deficits, by reducing the demands on the state caused by family breakdown.
“But quite apart from these serious political arguments, there is the personal argument, as I can certainly testify from my life. Nothing gives us greater happiness, security, comfort and hope for the future – or can cause us greater anxiety - than our families and relationships. So for me, families and relationships are not a secondary issue, they are an absolute political priority.
“I think politics has been way behind the public on this. People are talking about family, marriage, parenting, relationships - about how to bring up kids - like never before. From Wife Swap, to Supernanny, to mumsnet.com…to around 700 agony aunt columns in the UK alone. Something similar happened in America in the 1990s - and where cultural change led, politics followed.
“In 1996, President Clinton introduced funding for projects that “encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families.” And President Bush continued, setting up the ‘Healthy Marriage Initiative’, which funds ‘marriage education services’ nationwide. For too long, politicians here have been afraid of getting into this territory, for fear of looking old-fashioned or preachy.
“But where has that got us? Last year, in a shattering survey, UNICEF found that our country is not just doing badly when it comes to families - it said that Britain is the worst place in the developed world for children to grow up. Today, we have the report from the UK’s Children Commissioners showing that something terrible has gone on with our society these last few years. Right now, Britain has one of the highest rates of family breakdown in Europe. And we also have some of the worst social problems in Europe.
“That’s why I say it’s time for change: to make this country more family-friendly so we can turn around the social breakdown, turn around the crime and anti-social behaviour, turn around this unacceptable situation where our cost of living’s going up and the quality of life is going down.
“Family breakdown is of course not the only cause of our present social problems. But let me give you just two figures. A child whose parents have split up is twice as likely to live in poverty. And they’re seventy-five percent more likely to suffer educational failure.
“I don’t think we’ll ever get to the heart of the big problems wel failure, from debt and drug addiction to entrenched poverty and stalled social mobility, if we don’t help the best institution in our country – the family – do the vital work that it does in bringing up children. What that help is – and how it is delivered - will be amongst the defining social reforms of the next Conservative Government.
“Now, I recognise the perception some people have about our attitude to families. They think that we think it’s all about money. That tax breaks for marriage and ending the couple penalty in the benefits system is all it takes to stop family breakdown. That is absolutely not what I’m saying. People haven’t understood the scale and depth of the family-friendly reform we want to bring about in this country – not just economic but political, social, cultural too. So yes, that does include getting family finance right. But it also includes giving families more time to spend together. Giving families the help and support they need when the pressure is at its greatest. Helping to ensure affordable childcare. Taking on the unrelenting commercial influences on childhood. And, as Relate so clearly demonstrates, it includes understanding the vital importance of the emotional aspects of relationships and family life.Let me take each of these in turn.
“First, family finance. Yes, I do think it’s wrong that our benefits system gives couples with children more money if they live apart - and we will bring an end to the couple penalty. And yes, I do think it’s wrong that we’re the only country in the western world that doesn’t properly recognise marriage in the tax system - and I will ensure that we do. So we will change tax and benefits to make them more family-friendly.
“But I don’t want anyone to think I have a mechanistic view of these things – that a tax break for marriage will stop family breakdown in its tracks overnight. It won’t. This reform is about the message, more than the money. The message it sends is that our society values commitment and backs the public commitment two people make when they get married. If you like jargon, it’s about creating a positive social norm. In plain English – it’s about understanding that one of the biggest influences on our behaviour is what we think is expected by the society around us, and what we see other people doing.
“Backing marriage isn’t harking back to some 1950s golden age. Telling the world about your commitment to another person is modern and forward-looking, and should be celebrated. And, as I have said, supporting civil partnerships, that goes whether it’s between a man a woman, a woman and a woman or a man and another man. I was proud to make that clear to the Conservative Party conference a couple of years ago – and even prouder when they applauded.
“But family finance isn’t just about the positive social impact of recognising and rewarding marriage. We’ve got to recognise that one of the biggest barriers to creating a family-friendly Britain is the scale of child poverty in our country today. Of course we can and should tackle the immediate symptoms of poverty, by redistributing money to poor households.
“But the only serious way to end child poverty is to tackle the long-term causes the educational failure, the debt, the drug addiction, the worklessness and the homelessness that trap people in deprivation. We’re setting out a systematic plan to fight these long-term causes of poverty – not through the old-fashioned mechanisms of bureaucratic top-down state intervention but by backing the modern mechanisms of civil society the social entrepreneurs, the community organisations, the responsible businesses that will be the source of social progress in what will be the post-bureaucratic age.
“I have often said – and often been criticised for saying – that there’s more to life than money. But it’s true. And so people need to understand that aies get more time as well as more money. The rising cost of living and the rising cost of bringing up children means that parents have to work more – but they want to combine their work with a rich family life.
“Government has a vital role to play here – for example, in transforming our transport network so the average person no longer wastes one and a half hours in traffic jams or in congested trains on the way to or from work. But business has a responsibility too. It needs to understand that flexible working is a way of life whose time has come, and that’s why we will extend the right to request flexible working to every parent with a child under the age of eighteen.
“But there are particular times in a family’s life that put extra pressure on relationships, and making Britain more family-friendly means making extra provision for those times. The early years of a child’s life are a good example.
“It’s a startling fact that parents are more likely to split up in the first year after their child’s birth than at any other time. Helping parents in their children's early years is not about one single policy. Every family is different, and every family has different needs and different pressures at different times. So we need a sensible, practical range of policies to offer help and support.
“We’ve already set out our plans to offer all parents twelve months' parental leave, to be shared by mother and father as they choose. And we’ve announced that we will provide a universal health visiting service to all parents, with the health visitor acting as the trusted gateway to other services that a family might need – including relationship support. And we are also developing plans for our version of the Dutch kraamzorg system, which provides a dedicated maternity nurse for every new mother in their own home in the vital first few days.
“The next stage in our plan for a family-friendly Britain is a revolution in childcare. In the past, we Conservatives might have given the impression that young mothers should stay at home. Today, it feels like Labour are saying that all young mothers should go out to work. I think both are wrong. The state shouldn’t be telling women what to do: the state should be there to support the choices that women make for themselves and their family. That could mean staying at home, it could mean working part time, it could involve using state services like Sure Start, or it could mean using private nurseries, the voluntary sector or grandparents, friends and neighbours.
“Either way, my view is that the state should be there to support the choices that families make, not to impose one model of childcare on everyone so when we publish our childcare reform plans, they will be based on making childcare better and more affordable, and giving parents more choice.
“For many parents, today’s world can seem incredibly hostile. There are times when each shopping trip, advert break, magazine, film, TV programme or music video seems to conspire against you. If it’s not enticing your children with the latest toy, it’s introducing youngsters to sex, violence and adult emotional dilemmas at an incredibly early age.
“So we – government, parents and society – have got to stand together and demand that all our businesses accept the influence they have over children and behave accordingly. I believe social pressure, not regulation, is the best way to do this. So yes, I will keep criticising irresponsible marketing for instance that gauntlet you have to run at the checkout with endless pushing of chocolate and sweets so parents cannot help but be pestered by their children when they’re queuing. And I will speak out against any other commercial pressures that make life difficult for parents.
“But the aspect of my vision of a more family-friendly Britain that I want to spend most time on today is perhaps the most important of all: the emotional asall the flexible working you can ask for and the cheapest and most reliable childcare at your doorstep but if the warmth, the understanding and the love within a relationship and within a family is eroding away, then this means very little.
“Of course, the two are linked. The greater the financial pressure weighing on your shoulders, the less time you get to see your partner, the more demanding your child’s behaviour, the easier it can be for bitterness between couples to grow. But emotions are also like nothing else – they often operate in a vacuum. Everything else can be fine – but what was exciting one minute is banal the next; what left you fulfilled before only leaves you full of anguish now. In such cases, it often seems easier to get out than to stay in and try and make the relationship work. These are obviously incredibly tough issues.
“But I don’t think you can be serious about family policy unless you understand the importance of helping people deal with the emotional, as well as the practical aspects of family life. This isn’t comfortable territory for politicians. Our relationships break down and fail just like other people’s, arguably more so. And this goes to the heart of people’s personal lives – and some might say the best thing politicians can do is ‘keep their noses out.’
“But I think that’s a bit of a cop-out. Politicians are the ones who take taxpayers’ money and write billions of pounds worth of cheques to deal with the costs of family breakdown whether that’s social costs like crime and anti-social behaviour, or legal costs like the family courts and CAFCASS. So I think politicians have a responsibility – to the taxpayer and to society – to do what we can to bring these costs down.
“Relationship support, delivered in the right way to the right people at the right time, can play a major part in doing just that. Think about it like this: the costs of social breakdown have been estimated at £20 billion, yet the annual budget of Relate – the organisation that does so much to stop the breakdown happening in the first place - is only £24 million. Doesn’t that demonstrate how our priorities are wrong and how vital this difficult subject really is? So the right question is not whether politics is involved, but how.
“This lecture is not the place to set out a detailed policy platform, and I want us to work with organisations like Relate in developing our reform plans. But today I do want to set out the principles that will guide us and the four main areas we’re looking at. First, proper funding for organisations delivering relationship support. Second, more help to ensure they can recruit people to deliver it. Third, de-stigmatising the whole area of relationship support, so people who need it aren’t put off from getting it. And fourth, specific action to ensure that those who are hardest to reach, but most in need, can be helped in time.
“On funding, we made a major announcement last week as part of our Policy Green Paper on the future of social action and the voluntary sector. One of the most important commitments in that Green Paper is to make multi-year funding the norm for charities like Relate. No more worrying about what the next financial year will hold. But instead, certainty and stability, so you can better plan for the future. And make no mistake, I want to plan, with you, for a big expansion of the vital work you do.
“A crucial part of that planning process is the recruitment of counsellors. I think there are many emotionally literate people who would love the chance to become counsellors for organisations like Relate. Some might be in their thirties or forties, pursuing other careers but looking for a new challenge in their spare time.
“Some might be divorced, others with the same partner for years. Some with kids – others without. Whatever their circumstances, they would have the understanding and thenships.
“But last year, the Government made it much harder for organisations like Relate to recruit such people. They removed public funding for anyone who wants to pursue a second qualification that’s equivalent to, or lower than, the one they already have. So someone who in the past could get funded for doing a part-time course to become an entry level counsellor for Relate now has to pay £2,700 a year just because they did a BA twenty years ago. This puts people off, wastes talent and makes no sense.
“But as you know, the problem is not just people being put off from being counsellors. It’s people being put off from seeing counsellors. Because there’s such a stigma attached to getting help and advice on your relationship, by the time people do, it’s often too late. We’ve got to get rid of that stigma, so relationship support becomes more about crisis prevention than crisis management.
“Of course not every couple needs relationship support - but many more do need it than actually get it. If you have a nagging headache, you go to the doctor. And I want us to de-stigmatise relationship support so people feel completely comfortable, if they have a nagging difficulty in their relationship, in getting help from organisations like Relate. Government can take a lead here. One way is to start early – and insist, for example, that there’s no sex education in schools unless it includes relationship education.
“A cultural change to de-stigmatise relationship support should have a significant mainstream impact. But what about people who are not part of the mainstream? People who have excluded themselves from the everyday networks of friends, family, community and public services that we take for granted. This is why our plans for a universal health visitor service are so important. We’re planning a massive increase in the number of health visitors, so that each health visitor has a smaller caseload, can spend more time with every family, and can continue regular visits for longer. That means they will be able to see when relationships are getting frayed, and gently – or where necessary, firmly – guide people towards further support from organisations like Relate.
“This is the kind of support couples need. Not laissez-faire: just leaving them to get on with it. Not nanny-state: some bureaucratic system ordering them what to do. Just sensible, practical, personal support that people trust.
“Proper funding; help with recruiting counsellors, de-stigmatising relationship support and a new way of helping hard-to-reach families. These are four ways in which I think government can make a real difference to help couples deal with their emotional problems and stay together.
“But relationship support isn’t just about helping couples stay together. There will be occasions when it’s right for parents to split up. When that happens, it’s so important that there is the least amount of disruption for any children involved. For a child, there’s only one thing worse than family breakdown – and that’s badly handled family breakdown.
“Of course, that’s easy to say: every case has its own degree of pain. So if success in one is just getting Mum and Dad to talk to each other, then that surely is a goal worth fighting for. And if we can get parents to come to friendly and workable arrangements for their children without having to go to court, better still.
“Either way, this is the real test for relationship support – giving that support when people are at their very, very lowest. I know Relate already does so much in this area – working with the Child Support Agency to get better outcomes for children when their parents do split.
“So what can government do to help? I think there’s a lot we can learn from abroad. The Australian Government has set up sixty-five new Family Relationship Centres in cities and towns across Australia. They’re run by a range of oruality, confidential and impartial services. And one of the things they’re pioneering is post-separation work.
“The idea is simple. Just because parents break up, that doesn’t mean families have to break down. Family Relationship Centres intervene early to promote parental responsibility, they bring in uncles, aunties and grandparents to give support, and they act as a gateway to other services and Maria Miller is studying the Australian model to see if something similar could work here.
“There’s a quote from a few years back that neatly captures the challenges in this area. It’s from Wade Horn, US Assistant Secretary of State for Health and Human Services.
“He said:
‘The biggest problem in the area of marriage and divorce is the broad cultural belief that success or failure in marriage is a matter of luck. The second problem is that when faced with a troubled marriage, people believe you have only two options: get divorced or stay and be miserable.’
“The reason I’m in politics – and the reason why people work for organisations like Relate – is that we believe - we know .that families, given the right support, at the right time, can make their own luck and transform their own fortunes.
“There’s no magic wand or silver bullet. We’ve got to change our tax and benefit system, so commitment is rewarded. We’ve got to tackle the long-term causes of poverty, so every child gets the best start in life. We’ve got to change the way we work, so families get to spend more time together. We’ve got to make sure that each family gets the support it needs when the pressure is greatest. We’ve got to improve childcare so it’s there to support the choices parents make. We’ve got to demand that big business becomes every parent’s ally, not the enemy. And we’ve got to ensure that every family has access to the emotional support and help they need – in the relationship and after separation, should it be necessary.
“This is a serious and thoughtful agenda for making this country more family-friendly. We won’t be able to deliver it overnight. And we won’t be able to deliver it on our own. But I want everyone to understand how serious I am about this agenda, and what a central role it will play in the life and the mission of the next Conservative Government.”