Mary Dejevsky: We won't improve society by penalising stable relationships

How could we forget that all-American family tableau? Sarah and Todd Palin, their teenage daughter, Bristol, and Levi Johnston, the awkward-looking father of Bristol's unborn child. Levi, we were told – knowing smiles all round – was being welcomed into the State Governor's family and a wedding was on the cards. All the family would offer their support.

That is how things used to be done here, too, many moons ago. And it is how they might be done again, if the former Conservative leader, Iain Duncan Smith, and Centre for Social Justice get their way. In an interim study on family law, published yesterday, they called for measures to tackle the high incidence of family breakdown in this country. And central to these was strengthening marriage.

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Now there will be many who still think of Iain Duncan Smith in his stiff, rather hopeless days as Tory leader, and dismiss anything he says as a throwback. But the IDS of today is a very different character, greatly exercised about society – yes, he knows there is such a thing – and the ills that attend economic and spiritual deprivation. Broken families are, he believes, without a hint of self-righteousness or cant, where the broken society begins. He does his homework.

In singling out marriage as key to putting society back together again, however, he risks going further back in time than he need. It is a nice idea, of course, lots more white weddings at Easter, preparation classes for the happy couples, and legal recognition for pre-nuptial agreements to discourage "gold-digging". And, almost as a postscript, divorce to be made harder. In other words, marriage is to be treated once again as a long-term commitment, not just another lifestyle option.

Personally, I have much sympathy with this view; in practice, though, I doubt that efforts to rebuild the institution as such, will produce more stable families. Might preparatory classes not turn people off the whole idea? Does marriage make a relationship more stable, or are those who marry predisposed to form stable relationships anyway, which is why they chose to marry? And when you make divorce harder, do you not turn back the clock in the worst possible way – simply prolonging the unhappiness.

Yet there is a something that could be done, and it is financial. You do not have to go as far as Mr Duncan Smith did in an earlier report on social breakdown, which called for old-fashioned tax incentives to marriage to be restored – though as one of those who lost from their abolition nine years ago, I would cheer. Nor do you have to appear as romantically starry-eyed as David Cameron, when he sings the praises of marriage and promises to recognise it in the tax system, at least for those with children. That would bring Britain back into line with most other developed countries.

In fact, for those squeamish about appearing judgemental, marriage need not come into it. The same effect could be achieved much more simply – by removing the disincentives to any stable relationship that are currently built into the tax and benefits system. Many parents who live together are effectively penalised if they are on a relatively low wage or, if for whatever reason, one or other does not work. It is not just right-wing apocrypha from job-centres that says so. You only have to do the calculations; housing benefit has a particularly deterrent effect to cohabitation. "Living apart together" has become a peculiarly British phenomenon.

Of course, once the social stigma has gone from cohabiting and producing children outside marriage, as it has over the past 40 years, there is not much government can do to encourage people to live, or stay, together. I accept that people do not generally marry for the sake of tax breaks – though several couples I know married after inheritance tax provisions changed. But if a guiding principle of our tax system is not to judge people by their marital status, then it should be neutral in that regard. It should not make parents poorer if they choose to be one household rather than two.

Yes, I know how hard it is for single parents, I know what a terrific job they do, and I accept that the tax and benefits system should be geared, as far as possible, to shielding children from the effects of poverty. But consider this. Almost half of all births are now outside marriage; children in single-parent families are many times more likely to suffer abuse; the number of children taken into care has risen 20 per cent in 10 years. This is what the marriage – or co-habiting – penalty, British-style, has wrought.

m.dejevsky@independent.co.uk

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