Last week a study was published by Civitas, a leading independent think tank, providing further evidence of Britain's broken society, after UNICEF last year found Britain to be the worst place in the developing world for children to grow up.
As Chancellor, Gordon Brown abolished the married couples' allowance in 1999 and introduced tax credits which reward single parents over couples. Labour has devised a tax and benefits system which encourages couples to live apart, making some couples earning up to average incomes worse off by around £5,000 if they lived together.
This is despite mounting research evidence of the social benefits of marriage. The Millennium Cohort Study last year found that married parents are more than twice as likely to stay together as those who cohabit but do not marry.
Conservatives believe that stable, loving families are at the heart of a strong society, whether headed by a single parent, divorced parents, gay couples, or a conventional married couple. But Britain has one of the highest rates of family breakdown in Europe, costing over £20bn per year. We believe firmly that families deserve more support.
We have a bold vision for social reform and have announced a raft of pro-family, pro-marriage policies, including ending the couples penalty and recognising marriage in the tax system. We will also establish a Flexible Parental Leave scheme, allowing parents more leave from work between them.
By making Britain the most family friendly country in the world we will lay the foundations through which to repair Brown's broken society.
