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DAVID GROSSMAN: The last thing on Kate De Chenu's
mind is politics. But as she tries on her wedding dress she can be sure
the politicians are thinking about her. The main parties are falling over
each other to sound firmly pro-family but each party has problems with
the question of whether the state should reward those who marry.
As many a best man can
testify - a few unfortunate sounding words in a speech and the whole party
can disintegrate into tears and recriminations. That hair trigger volatility
is true too within political parties when the subject of marriage and
family policy comes up. In both Labour and the Conservatives behind the
demure veil of official policy lies the angry blush of disagreement.
CERIDWEN ROBERTS: Within both parties, it seems
to me there are people who would in a sense, in family policy terms, fit
equally well in the other one.
IAN TAYLOR MP: It's very important that,
that the state doesn't try to favour one part of a society by appearing
to penalise the other - for example children of married couples are of
course happy and contented, and we'd like them to stay that way, but that
doesn't mean to say that we want children of unmarried couples to be miserable.
GROSSMAN: Kate and her bridesmaids
have a few nerves to settle before the big day. Modern couples know it
takes more than a day's worth of sparkle to sustain a marriage. Today
two in five end in divorce. But that doesn't mean marriage is any less
popular among voters- it's just that today life is far more complicated
with people going through far more phases during adulthood.
ROBERTS: The vast majority of people
get married at least one, and the popularity of marriage I think can still
be seen by the fact that people are increasingly re-marrying. A large
proportion of, of marriages are second or third marriages. With that said,
it has taken a bit of a knock for a variety of reasons. One reason of
course is that people are delaying the age at which they get marriage,
so that we have co-habitation as a sort of pre-marriage state for the vast
majority of young people, they will cohabit. We also have divorce, so that
is in fact reducing the number of the adult population who at any one point
in time will be married.
GROSSMAN: Labour believes it's
laid out an impressive gift list for families. Child Benefit has been
increased. The new Working Families tax credit guarantees the take home
pay of families with a breadwinner, while the Children's tax credit gives
some families up to an extra four-hundred-and-forty-two pounds a year.
And the party says it's provided more child-care places and improved maternity
leave.
These Labour gifts aren't
actually wedding presents - none of the policies they contain require the
recipients to be married. In terms of tax and benefit the government doesn't
mind what kind of relationship people are in, or indeed if they're in
a relationship at all.
ALISTAIR DARLING MP: Were we to say, okay, we'll
support the children of people who are married and not other children,
how could you go to a four year-old and say, we'll support you, because
your mum and dad are married, but go to another four year old and say,
sorry we can't support you because of circumstances beyond your control,
your parents aren't living together? That would be nonsense, that would
be absurd.
GROSSMAN: The Prime Minister clearly
believes in marriage.
TONY BLAIR:(CLIP) Whatever our individual weaknesses
are, our collective strength lies in making the institution of the family
work for the good of Britain.
GROSSMAN: He and other senior cabinet
ministers like to suggest they think marriage is the ideal.
JACK STRAW: (CLIP) It plainly makes sense for government
to do what it can to strengthen the institution of marriage as a basis
for bringing up children.
GROSSMAN: But the Prime Minister
has encountered opposition to his desire to enshrine the pre-eminence of
marriage in policy, A White Paper containing this view was seemingly
abandoned because some Labour senior ministers thought the line an implicit
criticism of single parents and those who cohabit.
DEREK FOSTER MP: There are different views within
parties as there are across parties. I mean the Prime Minister has made
it absolutely clear that he favours marriage certainly as the best way
of bringing up children. He has said this on many public platforms. It
would be my own view too. It is not only a tension within the party, it
is a tension within society at large.
ROBERTS: I think it's quite understandable
why the upper echelons of the Labour party are very nervous, even though
they may personally support marriage, in making public pronouncements.
They feel it would be stigmatizing certain groups of society and it would
be also intervening in making statements about people's private choices.
The really big issue for public debate I think is that private choices
have public consequences, and I would say that's where the debate about
marriage and family life and family stability has to go in the next twenty
years.
GROSSMAN: There's one more job
for Kate to do - after all a bride without flowers wouldn't be traditional.
The Conservative leader William Hague too has a traditional view of marriage.
The party has assembled what it thinks is an impressive bunch of policies
- with at its centre-piece a financial commitment to married couples.
Some parts of the Tories list of presents for families sounds very similar
to Labour's. There are family scholarships to help parents get back to
work after bringing up children, also a two hundred pound increase in the
Children's tax credit, but some of the presents are rather more in traditional
Tory taste. A reinstatement of married couples tax allowance for those
with pre-secondary school-age children and tax free pensions for widows
and widowers both specifically designed to favour the married over the
unmarried.
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DAVID WILLETTS MP: Marriage is, we can all see
very clearly just as a factual observation, the best environment wherever
possible for bringing up children. And so and if we adults have a choice
whether they get married, nobody's being forced to get married, if they
choose to get married, we think it's right that that should be recognised
in the tax system.
TAYLOR: The number of people choosing
to live together but not necessarily getting married, and of course the
number of, of children of single parents, has been rising. Now you can't
just pretend that that's not happening; and I don't think it's appropriate
for the tax system suddenly to discriminate against a large number of British
people who for reasons that they've chosen deliberately, or by accident,
don't fit a particular pattern.
GROSSMAN: Kate's groom is Simon,
flanked by his best man and father he has work to do. Critics of the Tories'
married couples tax allowance say it may look traditional, but unlike
this trio it just doesn't pass muster.
MUSIC
The party had promised that it would bring back the allowance for all
married couples, but in the end, settled for the far cheaper option of
giving it to couples with a child under eleven. Mere tokenism, say the
other parties.
STEVE WEBB MP: We can all be in favour
of the family and it doesn't cost any money to say that. But when they're
pinned down onto hard cash, we get a married tax allowance that turns out
to miss out five out of six married couples, so it clearly is much more
about sounding right than actually doing anything substantial.
ACTUALITY.
GROSSMAN: This practice will hopefully
make Kate and Simon word perfect on the day. Some Tories believe the contest
for London Mayor was a useful rehearsal for the general election. The
Tory candidate Steve Norris fought a socially liberal campaign. His appeals
to those with non-traditional lifestyles did not go down well with the
Tory leadership. But the Conservative leader William Hague isn't trying
to win over progressive thinking voters. A senior Tory who dines on the
party's top table told me that Mr Hague's policy on marriage and the family
is simply designed to reassure the party's core supporters. In an election
where turnout could be very low, Mr. Hague wants to make sure that at least
the die hard reliables will turn out to say "I do." But some Conservative
backbenchers think that strategy smacks of defeatism.
TAYLOR: I hope a campaign that
we saw in the London elections indicates that we Conservatives really want
to try to represent everyone in our society, there's - there's no niche
that we're just aiming our attentions to. We are inclusive as a party;
we believe in government trying to be compassionate, which means helping
those most in need; and those in need come from all sorts of social and
cultural backgrounds. Now until we get that message across we will be regarded
as only representing a small proportion of the British people and that
will keep us out of government.
GROSSMAN: And even those who might
in private agree with Tony Blair's pro-marriage beliefs, think politicians
are at their most unconvincing when trying to preach family values.
FOSTER: I think that it is far
better to be realistic and see the changing pattern of relationships whether
you personally approve of it or not, recognise that people are going to
pursue their relationships like that and try and take them into account
in your own policies.
GROSSMAN: The big day is here at
last - the dress and the flowers are perfect. The domestic in-fighting
among politicians about marriage and the family has no impact here, the
subtleties of policy differences completely lost. For all their positioning
on the subject in advance of their own big election day, it may be that
there are some parts of our family lives where, try as they might, the
politicians just aren't invited.
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