Politicians and family life

In a speech to parents, hosted by the National Family and Parenting Institute (NFPI) on 20 June 2006, David Cameron set out the second stage in his 'modern Conservative well-being agenda' with a focus on family life. He said that measures of national income and national wealth told little about the condition of family life: 'Family life is a huge component of the general well-being of the nation and politicians should think about it and talk about it'. Without committing himself to any specific policies, Mr Cameron floated ideas including tax relief on childcare, changes to the tax allowance system to make a stay-at-home parent's allowances transferable to his or her partner and a network of Family Relationship Centres (FRC) across the country.

Mr Cameron said that the Conservatives had set up a Social Justice Policy Group (SJPG) which was investigating families and family breakdown in depth. It had recently produced a state of the nation report drawing the evidence together, eg: Within 5 years of the birth of a child 8% of married couples separate compared to 52% of cohabitees and 25% of those who marry after birth.

The FRC proposal is inpired by the 65 Australian FRCs set up under the Australian Government's package of family law reforms announced in May 2005. Further information about the Australian FRCs can be found at [2004] Fam Law 689 and [2004] International Family Law 141. Further information about the NFPI is on www. nfpi.org.uk. See August [2006] Fam Law for the full news article.