Cabinet file quashes lone-parent stereotype: What the ministers said. . .

PETER LILLEY, Secretary of State for Social Security, 7 October 1992, Tory Party Conference, Brighton: 'I've got a little list, of benefit offenders who I'll soon be rooting out . . . Young ladies who get pregnant just to jump the housing list, and dads who won't support the kids of ladies they have . . . kissed.'

JOHN REDWOOD, Secretary of State for Wales, 2 July 1993, Cardiff: 'One of the biggest social problems of our day is the surge in single- parent families . . . What is worrying is the trend in some places for young women to have babies with no apparent intention of even trying a marriage or stable relationship with the father of the child.'

MICHAEL HOWARD, Home Secretary, Tory Party Conference fringe meeting, 5 October 1993: 'So called 'progressive' theories in the 60s and 70s made excuses for crime . . . Part of this story has been the decline of the traditional two-parent family. The children, instead of learning the difference between right and wrong, may instead concentrate on how not to get caught.'

SIR GEORGE YOUNG, Housing Minister, Tory Party Conference, 7 October 1993: 'How do we explain to the young couples who wait for a home before they start a family that they cannot be rehoused ahead of the unmarried teenager expecting her first, probably unplanned child?'