Election Time! Red and Blue Green Papers on the Family

PROFESSOR CHRIS BARTON, Retired Family Law Teacher and a Vice-President of the Family Mediators Association

This election year kicked off with an early skirmish on the battlefield, if such it is, of family law. The Blues, through Mr Ian Duncan Smith's Centre for Social Justice (CJS) produced their ‘Green Paper on the Family 2010' (‘Thirteen years of Labour misrule have inflicted grave damage' on it) and the Reds have countered with their ‘Support for All: Families and Relationships' Green Paper (Cm 7787, 2010). Connoisseurs of political parties' ‘dog whistles' will savour the titular differences - and the common omission of the word ‘marriage' - although, as we will see, the CJS Paper subsequently makes much of that institution.

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