Mon 11 Dec 2006

Family values

David Starkey's guests are Melanie Phillips, Germaine Greer and Professor Steve Jones.

Breakdown Britain, today's report by David Cameron's Social Policy Justice Group, paints a bleak picture of life at the bottom in today's Britain. But while the Tories are championing family values and marriage as the best way of avoiding social breakdown, this is not another version of John Major's 'Back to Basics'  the findings are based on economics, not morals. The report blames the removal of tax advantages for married couples, the introduction of tax credits that make no distinction between co-habiting couples, and the welfare dependency culture for contributing to the crisis.

Has there ever been a 'traditional' family model to break down? Has Gordon Brown's tax credit policy, which treats all types of family equally, aided social breakdown by changing social values?