Evangelical Alliance and Care welcome Conservative leader's comments on family

We welcome Cameron's comments in response to the 'Breakdown Britain' report

13 December 2006

The Evangelical Alliance welcomes Conservative Party leader David Cameron's comments that the UK would be better off with more marriage and fewer divorces. Mr Cameron’s comments come following the release of the Breakdown Britain report, produced by the Conservative Party’s Social Justice Policy Group.

In the major Faith & Nation report, the Evangelical Alliance has called on the Government to promote laws, policies, and financial incentives that strengthen marriage and family life as foundational for civil society. The report calls for Evangelicals to:

a) Commend and support the divine ordinance of marriage as exclusively between one man and one woman, and promote it, together with the family, as central to the well-being of society.
b) Call on the Government to promote laws and policies and financial incentives that strengthen marriage and family life as foundational for civil society.

Dan Boucher, Director of Parliamentary Affairs for the Christian social action charity CARE, said: “CARE warmly welcomes the Breakdown Britain report. Whilst it is true that family breakdown is the result of a myriad of factors and that cannot simply be reversed by the passage of a new Act of Parliament, there is a great deal that the Government could do to strengthen family life in Britain. At the very least it should remove the fiscal disincentives for couples with children to live together currently meted out by the tax credits and wider benefits system. Better still it should create fiscal incentives supporting marriage. None of this would prevent alternative family arrangements but it would make it plain that the Government was committed to giving particular support to the family structure associated with the best child development outcomes. Any government committed to children’s rights and child development should not fight shy of these eminently sensible policy adjustments.”