My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, whose knowledge of this subject is second to none. I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Farmer, who is a great champion of the family. We should all be extremely grateful for his tenacity and belief in what he is trying to do and what we want done.
Every speaker in the debate has said this, but it is none the less true that there is growing concern about the fabric of our society, and many of the problems can be traced back to the weakening of the family unit. Over the past few decades, Governments of all colours have made lots of huge and silly mistakes, but none has been greater than the failure to acknowledge and stand up for the importance of the family, with all the consequences which have flowed from that. Strong and stable families are absolutely essential to the maintenance of a strong and stable society, and they are vital for the safe and secure care and upbringing of our children.
Why is there this ridiculous and almost fanatical desire on the part of many in our pseudo-intellectual and supposedly opinion-forming circles to deny this? Perhaps acknowledgement of the value of the family by these people would be accompanied by the need to admit personal responsibility and guilt, not just in their own lives but for the lives of those who have been affected by the views they have held and the decisions they have taken. Even our language about families seems designed to confuse. We used to have widows and widowers and we used to have unmarried mothers. Now we have single-parent families. What does that mean? Does a family have to have a husband and wife? Of course it is not essential or for obvious reasons always possible, but history shows it to be the most stable and, for children, the most supportive system. Why should we have to justify it? It has been the same for thousands of years without dispute, so why did we decide to downgrade it? It should not be necessary to bang the drum for the family, but bang it we must.
I am sorry that the Church does not have more to say about the role of the traditional family. I do not understand its reticence. By displaying openness and tolerance to other relationships and unions, traditional marriage has perhaps been weakened by neglect. As has been referred to in the debate, over the years we have seen a huge increase in the divorce rate. Divorce is devastating for children. We are dishonest if we deny
this to ourselves or to society at large. Financial arrangements may be made and plans for dividing time together put in place, but for the children concerned the effect is almost always absolutely devastating, and the damage done remains with them to a greater or lesser extent for the rest of their lives. That is true—uncomfortable, but true. Single parenthood from choice may work for the individual who chooses, but the children have not been given a choice. All the evidence shows that two parents give each other strength and support, and children of single parents start life at a disadvantage, obviously through no fault of their own.
Nothing undermines family life or parental responsibility more than the evils presented by the internet. It takes children to places where their parents cannot follow and they have absolutely no idea who their children are meeting or what they are doing. It is dangerous, pernicious and has rapidly taken over the lives of many of our children for whom even rapid reform will come too late. We now have cyberbullying on a massive scale. I was devastated to find that thousands of primary school children are watching hard-core pornography. It is harder for an underage child to place a bet on a horse than to watch hard-core pornography. It is vital that the Government take the toughest possible action on this as a matter of the greatest urgency.
Sadly, just a few days ago, two young men were murdered. They were knifed to death in separate incidents within a few hours of each other just a short distance apart in the London Borough of Camden. As I drove home that evening, I happened to tune into a radio programme about it. The presenter was pleading with his listeners to phone in with their ideas and possible solutions and attempting to understand what had happened. I heard an expert on youth activities and members of the public all discussing reasons or possible solutions. They mentioned government and local government responsibility. They mentioned a lack of funding, counselling, youth organisations, youth groups and sport. One word they never mentioned in all the time that I listened was “parents”. What is the key to this problem? It is parents and parental responsibility.
The longer this debate has gone on, I have slowly come to the conclusion that what has changed more than anything else over the years as far as keeping families together is not just love, because one hopes that love is always there, but other things. The financial need to stick together has gone, although not completely. Shame has gone too. I do not know what the answer is. It is tragic to have to admit that the only way we can keep families together is to make them poor again or reintroduce shame. That is a conundrum for us all that we must try to work through. I am sure that personal and perhaps selfish choice is, in many ways, at the heart of this. To a great extent we have lost the knowledge and the joy that is brought by putting yourself second in a family context.
The thread running through so many of the problems that I am talking about is the family, and the beginning of a solution to them is, without any doubt, the protection and reinvigoration of family life. My noble friend’s Bill puts responsibility on the Government to play their part in this revival and it has my fullest support.
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