Tories call for family support

David Cameron, Leader of the Opposition, has outlined plans to help families stay together and fathers take more responsibility for their children. The Conservative leader was on Thursday visiting a project in Manchester in which boys with absent fathers are given male mentors. And he warned that family breakdown, with growing numbers of children in "fatherless" families, was a root cause of youth crime.

"A spate of shootings – of children, by children – shone a spotlight on the terrible circumstances in which many young people grow up in our country today" he said of the recent high profile incidences of gun crime among young men. Yet we see no sign that Labour recognises the scale of the challenge – or has the first idea how to go about tackling it. From Gordon Brown, whose top-down, centralising policies have done so much to undermine families and the foundations of our society, there is silence. From Tony Blair, whose approach to politics is now drowning in its own shallowness, there is the response we have come to expect – crackdowns cobbled together for the Sunday newspapers and a Downing Street summit."

Cameron expanded on his theme that there needed to be a "culture change" in which families and communities took more responsibility for bringing up young people, rather than leaving it to the state and schools. And called for more powers to "compel" fathers to look after their children.

Those who avoid responsibility for their children should be made to feel as socially unacceptable as drink-drivers, he argued.

However responding to a report from the Tories' social justice policy group, chaired by former party leader Iain Duncan Smith, Cameron also said couples need more help to stay together, including support for marriage. He is considering proposals for premarital counselling and relationship lessons based on US and Australian examples recommended in Duncan Smith's report.

The move came as new figures showed the lowest number of weddings in the UK since 1896, with less than five per cent of cohabiting couples staying together for more than 10 years.

22 February 2007

http://www.epolitix.com/EN/News/200702/c2fb6051-1174-4494-b8d5-b47c455e426b.htm

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