Yesterday my blog focused on a new proposed Conservative Party manifesto that was published in early September by a Tory MP and Tory Peer, along with the support of 50 more Tory MPs and 7 more Tory Peers. The Manifesto has many flaws in my view as I explained in my blog. However the theme which is explained in the title ‘A Manifesto to strengthen families’ is an important theme as our nation does need strong families, but we need strong families to exist in the context of strong communities. It is completely unsustainable for any family to become strengthened in the context of a damaged or impoverished community. All communities and many families where the members have any interest in party based politics, have a diversity of opinions that represent different ends of the many political spectra. Equally the need to strengthen communities and families demands a cross party level of support. For this reason it is very sad that fifty nine Tory politicians felt that there was merit in supporting a partisan approach to family strengthening. On Thursday a debate took place in the House of Lords which first alerted me to the manifesto. It is very sad that the opening comments by Michael Farmer who was one of the co-authors of the manifesto are so party focused:

Prior to [2007], our social and political commentary had become stuck in the groove of orthodoxy that said financial hardship caused families to fall apart and, as a result, family policy had been reduced to a three-word slogan, “End child poverty”. Yet shortly before the Labour Government came to power, Tony Blair told his party conference that a strong society cannot be morally neutral about the family, and referred to:

“The development of an underclass of people, cut off from society’s mainstream, living often in poverty … crime and family instability”.

He described this as a “moral and economic evil”. The first ever Green Paper on the family, Supporting Families, published shortly after Labour came to power, did not shrink from addressing family instability, to Labour’s great credit. However, policy proposals to tackle relationship breakdown within it were largely abandoned and family stability became the elephant in the room of social policy, despite it being a root cause, as well as an effect, of poverty. It hits the poorest the hardest, compounds existing disadvantage and is a potent driver of wider social breakdown.

Of the various comments made during the debate the one that for me best sums up my own views came as a single sentence from Andrew Mawson who stated “In my experience, it takes a family and a local community to raise children well.” 

I believe that our Parliament as a whole needs to focus on the vital role that families play in the context of a wider society. It is good that one of the elements of the manifesto suggests a Family Impact Assessment that should be carried out to test every piece of legislation that emerges from the party in question. In reality what we need is a Community Impact Assessment carried out on behalf of Parliament as a whole which takes into account the impact on business, on the environment, on all people of all ages and of course on families.