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ON THE RECORD
PAUL BOATENG INTERVIEW
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 1.11.98
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Dangerous territory for politicians
isn't it, this getting involved with families and marriage. It's backfired
before, it could backfire again, couldn't it?
PAUL BOATENG MP: The government really doesn't have any
option. We can't be neutral on the family. The family is the building block of
society, it's a child's bridge into successful education, it's a child's bridge
into good health and development. It's society's first frontline against
disorder and crime. So we can't be neutral about it. It's an intensely private
institution and one has to respect that, but it has important public
consequences. So, we've got to be there supporting the family, not in a
judgemental way, but supporting it nevertheless.
HUMPHRYS: Not in a judgemental way, but the
problem is the more you focus on the family, and its benefits and on marriage
and its benefits and its value, the more people tend to say: but look at the
imperfections of politicians. I mean we've had Ron Davies this week, we've had
a government whip getting involved with another woman. In the normal course of
events, people might sort of say: 'well, alright' but they will concentrate on
those things precisely because you're sort of saying, back to basics, that's
the danger isn't it.
BOATENG: Martial breakdown and Clapham Common,
people understand that and they..
HUMPHRYS: Are you sure?
BOATENG: Oh, they understand that and they
understand its proper place. You know leave that to the tabloids. But serious
people and serious programmes recognise that there is an issue out there
around pressure on the family. That we've got, what, in Britain the second
highest divorce rate in Europe, record in Europe teenage pregnancies, a third
of children being born into lone parent families.
These are issues, practical issues
about the day-to-day business of bringing up children, that people expect
government to have a response to and we would be failing in our duty if we
didn't do that. But it's not preachy, it's practical. And let me just give you
an example. All the evidence is - One Plus One produced some research about
this just the other week, the children's charity, and this is all about
children. That if you make early interventions using say health visitors into a
family situation, at a time when the family are getting used to a new arrival,
when they are pressures on the marriage, when there's uncertainty about exactly
what you do in terms of a child waking up and crying in the middle of the
night, you can make enormous difference in terms of the outcomes for the child,
in terms of the outcomes for the relationship. And so you have to get in there
to do what we are doing, which is to support health visitors. To say you know,
we are going to have an innovation fund that's going to mean a million extra
pound for health visitors, we're going to expand the number of health visitors.
It's intensely practical. There's no sort of Holy Grail of family policy out
there which governments have to strive and reach for. It's practical stuff,
it's commonsense stuff and it's making sure that government departments work
together in order to support what's happening out there. The good things that
are happening out there.
HUMPHRYS: Come to that in a moment, if I may, but
just deal finally with the political issue, because the problem is you say it
isn't preachy, but that is inevitably the way it is going to come across and
people will say...
BOATENG: No, I don't think it is.
HUMPHRYS: Let me put the question to you. That if
you campaign, as it were, if you make policy on the family, then people are
entitled, voters are entitled to say are they not: well look, in that case,
shouldn't all government ministers for instance be marriages as opposed to one
or two of them being in relationships where they are not married. You know, in
other words: do as I do, not as I say.
BOATENG: No, John because we are not saying
everybody should get married. We are not saying...
HUMPHRYS: Sounds a bit like that.
BOATENG: We are not saying that the family is,
you know, something out of the forties and fifties, the ideal home type family,
two children, or two point four, one point three five children and a couple.
Life isn't like that, the family today in this modern world is a rich and
diverse and varied creature. Sometimes it's nuclear, sometimes it's extended.
You can't put families into little boxes. What you do have to say, what you do
have to say though is that stability is important, love, care are important,
discipline is important, responsibility is important and government has a duty
to underpin that in practical ways. So it's not being prescriptive about
marriage, but it's supporting marriage it's supporting stable relationships,
even those outside marriage. Because for instance when you support, as we
intend to support, and the Home Office has won new resources to support an
organisation like Relate for instance..
HUMPHRYS: Used to be the Marriage Guidance
Council..
BOATENG: You support an institution that indeed
used to be Marriage Guidance Council, is now called relate because you
recognise that people who are not in married relationships, but they are
nevertheless in relationships, require support and assistance in order to stay
in those relationships because that benefits children. Children are at the
heart of what we are seeking to do.
HUMPHRYS: The trouble with that explanation, a lot
of people would agree with it, that certainly there is a kind of modern
relationship, there is a modern arrangement that didn't used to apply in the
old days, it does now. But the trouble for politicians, talking about I mean,
you for instance said, not so very long ago, 1966, I looked it up this
morning - 1996 - not quite '66..
BOATENG: ..I was going to say, I was only fifteen
then..
HUMPHRYS: Precisely.
BOATENG: Precocious, yes, but not that
precocious.
HUMPHRYS: Not that. 1996, you wrote a letter in
which you said that that kind of modern arrangement was profoundly
misconceived, it was profoundly misconceived - oh yes - to believe that that
sort of arrangement was as good as, was as good as this is the key thing, as
the nuclear family, the married husband and wife with a couple of kids.
BOATENG: What I said then and what I say now is,
that all the evidence shows that where there is marriage, there's a greater
chance of the relationship holding. That's a fact, that's an established fact.
So it makes sense, if you want your relationship to endure, to consider
entering into some form of religious or civil ceremony that recognises the
nature and the enduring nature of your commitment, one to the other.
HUMPHRYS: So that is the ideal then.
BOATENG: It's not a question of that being the
ideal..
HUMPHRYS: It clearly is.
BOATENG: The evidence is that it works and
therefore it's what works what counts and therefore for most people the
overwhelming majority of people will want marriage. And it's the state's job to
say, well if that's what you want, then we are going to support it.
HUMPHRYS: Oh, you've gone further than that.
BOATENG: Let me give you an example of why it's a
practical project. The Registrar of Marriage, the place you go to..
HUMPHRYS: I want to come to that, can I just hold
you off that for a moment.
BOATENG: It's important that that is supportive
of your intention to get married and explains to you what it's all going to be
about, some of the challenges, some of the difficulties you are going to have
to overcome and prepares you for that. So it's intensely practical, not preachy
at all.
HUMPHRYS: Since you've raised that particular
point, I wanted to come down a bit, but let me just touch on that. You heard
the Registrar on our film there saying absolute nonsense: I'm not qualified to
tell anyone, I've been married for thirty-nine years and I wouldn't know how to
go about telling anybody.
BOATENG: The important thing is that at the
moment the law is so antiquated and quite frankly unhelpful in this area, that
it doesn't even allow him to have present in his workplace, where people go to
get married, information..
HUMPHRYS: He doesn't want it.
BOATENG: It's not a question about..
HUMPHRYS: ..he doesn't want it.
BOATENG: It's not a question about what he wants.
He is a civil servant like anyone else, it's a question about whether or not it
will in fact be good for society, good for all of us to have some guidance when
we go - let me finish the point - when we go and get married about what we can
do in order to prepare ourselves for marriage. If you go and get married in a
church, you have an option to prepare yourself for marriage, if you choose a
registry office, and why shouldn't you, you don't have that option. What we
are saying is let's have a discussion about that. Maybe we should have that
option available and what this document, Supporting Families, does is actually
to raise that as part of the debate. That can only be for the good. It's long
overdue, it's time we did it, now we are going to have a debate about how we
can support families.
HUMPHRYS: But you see what that registrar in our
film was saying, a very experienced man, as I say thirty-nine years married, he
was saying, 'I don't want any part of this. It isn't.....'
BOATENG: Well we're not asking him......
HUMPHRYS: ...It isn't my job to influence, you
know, I am a recorder. I'm not an influencer of events. It's absolutely
nonsense to think that I should say to people before they get married - now
look, read this, bear this in mind, take this away, take this into account.
BOATENG: Well maybe with so many marriages
breaking down, with so many children being left without two parents being
engaged in their upbringing it's time we had people who did a little more than
record John. Maybe we actually ....
HUMPHRYS: But he's an expert......
BOATENG: No he isn't an expert......
HUMPHRYS: He knows more than I do and possibly
more than you do.....
BOATENG: No. No he isn't an expert if I may say
so on issues in relation to divorce or issues in relation to the preparation of
people for marriage and we're not asking him to be. What we are saying is it
makes sense in a civil society where some people will choose to get married
outside of a church to have the same available in a civil context, in a context
of a civil wedding as would be available in a religious wedding. So you would
have an opportunity to prepare yourself for the rigours of marriage. Rigours
that you and I well understand. When one had one's first child. When one's
wife and oneself had one's first child and indeed one's second and indeed
more...
HUMPHRYS: Five in your case....
BOATENG: Five in my case. One went along to
classes that prepared you to have the child. Nobody thought anything of it
going to an antenatal class.
HUMPHRYS: No but that's different from being
prepared for marriage though isn't it?
BOATENG: No. What is different about it because
it's an equally important step in your life.
HUMPHRYS: Okay, I'm not questioning whether.....
Alright, if it is that important and you've gone to great pains to explain why
it's so important, why have you cut the married couples' tax allowance? Why
are you... rather why are you proposing to do it? It's coming up.
BOATENG: I'll tell you exactly why, because
what's the most important thing of all is children and what we have done with
the money that we're saving through the married person's tax allowance is to
increase the children's allowance, the money that goes to benefit
children......
HUMPHRYS: All children? All children?
BOATENG: Yeah......
HUMPHRYS: Oh so it doesn't buttress marriage....
BOATENG: Hold on a minute..... But we're not in
the business.... we're in the business of providing the best possible context
for children to .......
HUMPHRYS: Oh so you're not in the business of
buttressing marriage?
BOATENG: We're in the business of providing the
best possible context for children to grow up in and that means also being
concerned, not just simply with the form, the relationship which they grow up
in but also being concerned about their financing and that's why we've used
that money......
HUMPHRYS: Well.....
BOATENG: Hold on. That's why we've used that
money to increase child allowance by twenty per cent. That's two pounds fifty
a week extra for every child. That's why we've also used that money and more
in order to provide an extra two pounds fifty, beginning this month, for those
children who fall into the poorest categories who are currently reliant on
income support and family credit. So it's not about being preachy or
prescriptive about the form of relationship. It is about looking after the
best interests of children
HUMPHRYS: And, and.....
BOATENG: That's why we don't just talk about
preparation for marriage and about mediation in divorce and doing all one can
in order to keep relationships together, that's why we also talk about sure
start, about briging up children, getting that right, making sure they
maximise their educational achievement, five hundred and forty million pounds
over three years to that end helping parents bring up children better. Not
being prescriptive about them.....
HUMPHRYS: Not being any of those things as you
said......
BOATENG: Not being prescriptive about the
relationship between the mother and the father but saying it's important that
we all work together. Mums, Dads societies, schools, the health service in
order to give children the best possible start.
HUMPHRYS: Nor is it then clearly, as you are
suggesting, about buttressing marriage because you see I thought it was.
BOATENG: But you see that's part of it.
HUMPHRYS: How can it be when there isn't one
single, if I may just ....one question... Let me put just one question
because you've had a good go there. The one financial thing that you could
have done uniquely to help married couples was to continue, perhaps even
increase who knows, the married couples' tax allowance. Now I take your point
that you're using that money for children, a very good cause. A lot of people
would say, 'but it is not doing that which you have said is terribly terribly
important and that is to buttress the institution of marriage', or perhaps I
misunderstand you, perhaps you don't care particularly about buttressing the
institution of marriage?
BOATENG: Marriage is important but stable
relationships are important......
HUMPHRYS: Equally?
BOATENG: And when you're..... of course they're
equally important. It's important for the child...
HUMPHRYS: Equally important to marriage? Marriage
is not the...
BOATENG: Of course marriage is important because
all the evidence is that if you're married your relationship is more likely to
endure and be stable.......
HUMPHRYS: So why not buttress it with the married
couples' allowance.......
BOATENG: But in supporting marriage and in
making it more likely that marriages will survive and endure you also have to
recognise where people are at. You have to recognise the needs of children and
those children particularly who are growing up in relationships which are not
in fact relationships that are supported by marriage and you mustn't forget
them too. And that's why I say this isn't about back to basics, harking back
to some golden era of the married family, it's about recognising children's
needs and doing that in practical ways. That's why, for instance, we're going
to have a national institute for parenting and the family, building on
experience in other countries, in Australia, in Canada and elsewhere where it's
recognised that you can work, the private sector, the public sector together in
order, in a practical way to support kids and families.
HUMPHRYS: Right. So I take from all of that then,
that so long as it is a stable relationship, so long as it's stable, it doesn't
matter whether they are married, whether perhaps it's a gay couple, two men,
two women, whether indeed it's a single woman looking after the child, so long
as, so long as these relationships between child and parent are stable that's
okay?
BOATENG: Of course it doesn't matter if it's a
lone parent, of course we're not being prescriptive about lone parents. The
important.....
HUMPHRYS: Nor indeed gay parents...but marriage
between a man and a woman and a relationship between gay parents is equal.
BOATENG: The important thing is not for me or for
you to make value judgements about the nature of people's relationships. The
important thing is to make sure that we have strong families in order to bring
up healthy and successful children, and this government recognises that
government has a responsibility..
HUMPHRYS: Whatever that family may be?
BOATENG: ... to work with the public in bringing
that about. People will make their own choices in terms of their
relationships. Children aren't able to make that choice. We have to support
them, and this government will for the good of the nation.
HUMPHRYS: Paul Boateng, thank you very much indeed
for joining us.
BOATENG. My pleasure.
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