Politics

At last, a political battle about the family. And not a moment too soon

25 November 2006

An easy starting-point for the Conservatives would be to reverse the tax and welfare incentives that are the exact opposite of the pro-family measures employed on the Continent. Jill Kirby from the Centre for Policy Studies has calculated that if an average family splits up, its income rises 35 per cent to £301 a week. It is against this backdrop that fathers drop out of the picture: for those in low-income families, the man’s presence can actually be a financial burden. Insanely, our welfare system has deprived the low-income family of its economic viability and created fiscal incentives for it to break up.

A clear task for the Conservatives would be to tear up this policy, and promote marriage. The work Iain Duncan Smith is doing with the Centre for Social Justice will, I believe, be the most valuable and radical of all the policy reports commissioned by Mr Cameron. Liam Fox’s Tory leadership campaign was based on the proposition that Labour has left Britain with a ‘broken soc-iety’ just as it left a broken economy in 1979. This agenda is not the monopoly of the Tory leader: Conservatives, as a movement, see a clear mission ahead of them.

As does Labour. Eradicating poverty is at the centre of Mr Brown’s agenda — and you can be sure he will continue the Sure Start and pro-intervention strategy. Herein lies the basis of a genuine clash in a Westminster all too often driven by political androgyny and consensus. After a decade avoiding the subject of family life, the two parties are ready not only to venture on to this territory but to do battle on it.