Breakdown of family at the heart of society's ills
LAST year, a United Nations survey found the United Kingdom to be the worst place in the developed world for children to grow up. Despite the economic growth of recent years, the gap between the worst off and the rest of society has widened.
There has been no reduction in social breakdown or welfare dependency, and our existing benefits system actually contributes to the difficulties.
Social problems cause public spending and the state to mushroom. Family breakdown costs the taxpayer 24 billion per year at a conservative estimate.
On top of that, costs arising from educational underachievement of 18 billion and crime of 60 billion bring the total beyond 100 billion. Family-orientated plans are required which can serve to cut crime, drug abuse and tackle educational underperformance.
Investment and intervention in early years is crucial when parents most need help. Disadvantage and inequality can begin as soon as a baby is born. A child's educational development at 22 months accurately predicts attainment at 26 years and research from the United States indicates that every dollar spent on early intervention brings a 17 fold dividend.
At his party's spring forum recently in Gateshead, Conservative leader David Cameron stressed the importance of families as the bedrock of society.
There is no doubt that a greater public policy focus on the family makes sense. As well as the traditional family unit, Cameron hailed the efforts of "single parents, divorced parents, widows – all working hard to keep their families together".
Vital
He said: "Real lasting long-term change means backing parents and helping the family to do the vital work it does.
"Families should be the most important thing in our country's life because those kids at the end of the street causing mayhem smashing up the bus shelter…we all know what the problem is.
"It goes back to the home, the way they were brought up, the lack of a strong family to teach them that you just don't behave like that."
In the UK, we have the highest level of family breakdown in Europe. In the past ten years, the number of lone parents has risen from 1.6 to 1.9 million.
Those who experience family breakdown are 75 per cent more likely to fail at school, 70 per cent more likely to be a drug addict and 50 per cent more likely to have alcohol problems.
Seventy per cent of young offenders come from broken families. Over 50,000 children truant every day with 46,800 crimes committed in London each year by children playing truant.
Children in care are ten times as likely to be excluded from school as other pupils. Alcohol-related deaths have increased threefold and over one in three children under the age of 15 has taken drugs in the last year. Drug and alcohol abuse costs society 39 billion per year.
350,000 children have drug-addicted parents and one million have alcohol-addicted parents, with the Government spending 400 million per year on drug treatment.
Incentives
Our tax and benefits system provides incentives for parents to stay apart or split up rather than come together and stay together. This has to change.
Recent research showed that due to how tax credits operate, a two-earner couple with combined income of 35,000 would be nearly 5,500 per year better off living apart, and that a couple on credits would have to work 116 hours to obtain the same income as a lone parent working 16 hours.
Often, if a husband is classified as long-term sick or disabled, there is no financial gain or sometimes a loss if the wife goes out to work. John Hutton, the former Work and Pensions Secretary, said: "If you have been on incapacity benefit for more than two years, you are more likely to retire or die than ever get another job."
The UK spends more on welfare benefits, not including pensions, than on education.
Too many children leave schools with no qualifications or skills. Communities are blighted by alcohol and drug addiction, debt and criminality and low levels of life expectancy.
As a society, we need strong families, effective education for all children, protection for the vulnerable and an end to welfare dependence.
Work provides a way out of poverty for people, restores self-esteem and belief in society. We have a high proportion of so-called NEETS – not in education, employment or training.
Britain has the highest level of children living in workless households in Europe, at more than 15 per cent.
In the deprived neighbourhoods of Glasgow for instance, one third of people of working age are economically inactive and 50 per cent of all households have no earned income.
These are not issues solely for the Government to overcome. Indeed, rather than Government working from on high, it is the work on the ground through community groups, charities and churches for example that is likely to prove most effective.
However, we must guarantee that where the Government can assist, it is actually making a positive difference rather than exacerbating problems.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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