Mending Britain's Broken Society

The National Equality Panel Report commissioned by the Government concluded that after 13 years of Labour Government, income inequality has grown to its highest levels since WWII, while social mobility remains stubbornly low.

Typically Labour has attempted to treat the symptoms and not the causes of growing poverty and inequality. We have seen too many government leaflets and websites but not enough confronting of the big issues that families are forced to deal with everyday. Serious and threatening problems such as crime, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, educational failure and the breakdown of the family unit need to be properly addressed.

A Conservative Government would fully back Britain's families. They will receive constructive incentives emphasising the importance of an intact family unit because we believe that a child's success begins at home. Children do better when their parents are together but more than half of unmarried cohabiting parents split up before their child's fifth birthday.

Under Labour, the UK has one of the highest rates of family breakdown in Europe. At the same time we recognise the important role single parents play and will continue to support them. Labour's adoption of the Conservative idea to give greater rights to grandparents is a step in the right direction but it doesn't go nearly far enough.

A Conservative government will take decisive steps towards backing Britain's families with measures such as:
• Ending Labour's couple penalty in the tax system and recognising marriage and civil partnerships in the tax credit system.
• Providing 4,200 more health visitors to give parents a guaranteed level of support before and after birth until their child reaches school age.
• Extending the right to request flexible working to every parent with a child under the age of eighteen.
• Introducing a new system of flexible parental leave, which will let parents share maternity leave.

Joanne Cash said; "I have done a lot of work with disadvantaged children in Westminster North through my Support of Step Up and the Butterfly Reading Group and know the importance a strong family unit can play in improving a child's prospects. David Cameron's recognition of the value of family confronts the very heart of so many of the problems we face in Westminster North and the country as a whole."