Single parent charity condemns Tory family stance

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10/07/07 One Parent Families|Gingerbread has welcomed proposals in today's Conservative report Breakthrough Britain for better relationship education, joined -up services for separated families and investment in childrens' early years but criticises the plan to introduce tax breaks for married couples.

Chief Executive of the charity Chris Pond said:

"It is very difficult to see how spending £6.2bn in supporting marriage through the tax and benefit system would do anything to tackle the child poverty that lies at the heart of many of the problems identified by this report. Using tax breaks to support or encourage marriage is a blunt instrument which has a history of failure and would be hugely expensive, benefiting better off couples rather than the poorest families. Tax breaks for marriage existed throughout the 1970s and 80s but co-incided with a steep rise in family breakdown.

"The idea that lone parents are doing better than couples with children flies in the face of the facts. Half of lone parents' children are in poverty compared to 23% of children in couple-families.

"The independent Joseph Rowntree Foundation has estimated that £4bn is needed to tackle child poverty. It is unclear whether the report intends that the £6bn is spent instead of this or in addition, and if the latter, where this additional money will come from."

On the proposal that lone parents should be forced to work once their youngest child is five, Chris Pond said:

"The report ignores the facts of life for many lone parents, most of whom have been married or in stable relationships and expected their families to stay intact. Seventy one per cent of lone parents surveyed by One Parent Families said what prevented them from working was a lack of childcare and flexible working. Most lone parents want to work but forcing them to put a job before their children would do nothing to improve the social or emotional wellbeing of children. This report seems unable to decide whether parents have a right to put their children first: on the one hand it proposes tax allowances to encourage more parents in couples to stay at home to care for children; on the other it wants to take that option away from those who find themselves parenting alone."

"A back-to-Basics approach to family structure will do nothing to address the real poverty problems facing both lone and couple parents. Lone parents will only believe that Conservative attitudes towards them have changed when they see policies that target increased investment at all poor children, whatever their family's structure. Former Conservative policy guru David Willetts told us that the Tory war on lone parents was over. Today's report suggests that hostilities have been resumed."

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