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Mr. Howarth: I would agree with the Home Secretary--
Mr. Marsden: That is not the question.
Mr. Howarth: The Home Secretary says that the best relationship is that of marriage. The hon. Gentleman will have heard my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal say that that is not to stigmatise those who are in different relationships. We are being asked to give some leadership. It is my view that the Bill does not give the necessary leadership, because the fact is that the family in Britain is in crisis. We have all seen it at our surgeries and advice centres. I doubt that there is an hon. Member present who in the last month at his or her surgery or advice centre has not had evidence of that. I shall not quote from a constituency case that came up last Saturday, partly because it is simply too distressing.
I should like to quote what the noble Lord Stoddart of Swindon, a Labour peer, said in another place on 23 March:
- compulsory sex education has not done much to stabilise, let alone promote, marriages . . .
There is more promiscuity, less sexual morality, less marriage, more divorce, more single mothers, more under-16 pregnancies and more child pregnancies . . . all those matters were supposed to have been dealt with by the various Acts that have been passed. Clearly, they are not delivering the goods.--[Official Report, House of Lords, 23 March 2000; Vol. 611, c.463.]
I and my hon. Friends are not proposing the amendments simply out of a belief in the moral case for marriage, although I subscribe to it. I entirely agree with what my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal said, and I hasten to acknowledge the work that CARE, Christian Action Research and Education, and the Christian Institute have done to fight this battle.
I agree with the Home Secretary: the evidence to which he referred indeed shows that marriage confers benefits all round. Studies have consistently shown that marriage generally, not always, leads to a healthier and happier life and that children benefit from that. Like my right hon. Friend, having passed the 25-year mark, I can bear testimony to the long-suffering wife I have and to some splendid and dutiful children. I am under no illusion that all marriages work out. I believe, nevertheless, that marriage is, as the Home Secretary says, the better framework for bringing up children.
Furthermore, the evidence shows that stable relationships, which I suppose one could describe in other terms as cohabiting, are no substitute for marriage. I am
sorry to say that there is plenty of evidence that that is so. For example, the British household panel survey a few years ago found that cohabitant couples are almost six times as likely to split up as those who are married. The Economic and Social Research Council found that even where there are children, half of cohabiting couples part within 10 years, compared with just one in eight of married parents. One cannot ignore those facts.As recently as just a couple of months ago, the Office for National Statistics published a document, "Mental health of children and adolescents in Great Britain", which contained some startling information. I do not want to detain the House for too long, so I shall simply give the flavour of it. It shows the prevalence of mental disorders by family type, age and sex. Let us take conduct disorders in boys aged 11 to 15. For those in married households, the percentage with a disorder was 5.7. In cohabiting households, the figure was 17 per cent., three times as great. For those in households where there was just a single parent, the figure was 17.6 per cent. Against that factual background, we have a duty to the children of this country to ensure that the laws and regulations regarding sex education take into account the facts of what is happening.
The Government should stop trying to appeal to every interest group for fear of offending one or other of them. It was indefensible to give the advice that appeared in the guidelines that were published in March. They stated:
- there should be no direct promotion of sexual orientation.
8.30 pm
If the Government accept the amendment, they will at least no longer be perceived to be speaking with forked tongue. As my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry has already said, the amendment has, for the Minister's comfort, been lifted straight from the Government's document. They could therefore happily seize ownership of it. I am not proud. They can own it, and show that they are being entirely consistent. However, if the Government fail to support the amendment, they will show that neither is there joined-up government, nor are the Government honest in their language in the "Supporting Families" document.
I end with the question that my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal posed to the Minister. Does she believe that marriage should be at the heart of sex education? If not, she must tell the House. The parents and children of this country should know.
Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury): It gives me great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) and their cogent and compelling arguments.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot, I shall focus on rearing children and the message that we should propagate in schools. I should like to add one more study
to the compelling list that he cited. Twelve years ago, a study was undertaken in America, not by some right-wing think tank or a religious organisation, but by the United States Department of Health. I am grateful to the Institute of Economic Affairs for publishing it. It examined juvenile delinquency among young people in all major family types. Married couples who had remained together constituted one category; three other categories included single parents and cohabiting couples.The study examined five different income categories. In debating the best way in which to bring up children, the crucial argument that tends to be used by those promoting the other side is the importance of poverty. They claim that we leave out that factor, and that because poverty is more frequently associated with alternative life styles, one would expect to find more juvenile delinquency and more of a whole range of other problems, such as those to which my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot referred, among those who lived such life styles.
The study was astonishing because it showed that the poorest category of children, from families who earned less than $10,000 a year in 1988--a level of subsistence that would be regarded as intolerable by many in this country--had a significantly lower level of juvenile delinquency than the average in the three other categories. I looked a little further down the table and discovered that in the poorest category, the married couples who had stayed together and reared their children had fewer children guilty of juvenile delinquency than the wealthiest group--those who earned more than $50,000 a year.
My hon. Friend mentioned the contrast between married couples and cohabiting couples, as revealed in a British study. The most recent study that I have seen was undertaken three years ago. The critical difference between it and those that my hon. Friend cited was that it pulled out cohabiting couples who subsequently got married. If, for 1997, we compare those who were married in 1987 with those who were cohabiting in 1987 and did not subsequently get married, the success rate of the relationship was 81 per cent. in the former category and 15 per cent. in the latter.
Mr. Gummer: Does my hon. Friend agree that if such overwhelming evidence were offered to the Government in any other circumstances, they would be bound to accept it? Yet when we offer the evidence that my hon. Friend described, it is not acceptable because the Government are not prepared to stand out against those for whom such evidence is embarrassing.
Mr. Brazier: I hope that my right hon. Friend is wrong, but I fear that he is right.
The case is overwhelming. I was once privileged to take part in a debate against the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) at the Oxford Union. Participants in the debate included a rising generation of young people, some of whom have now found their way into the House. I was encouraged by the fact that the motion defending the traditional family was passed heavily. The point that needs making, tonight as then, is that our arguments are not about stigmatisation but about aspiration.
One of my closest and dearest friends was brought up by an extremely violent alcoholic father. Sadly, most classrooms today include a child whose father is a violent
alcoholic. Does that mean that we should not teach children that it is wrong to beat children? Many children are brought up with a parent who is hooked on a drug; does that mean that we should not teach children that they should not take drugs? Of course not. Almost every family in the land is affected by, for example, divorce or illegitimacy. However, that means neither that we should have a conspiracy of silence nor that we should stigmatise anyone. We should aspire to the best. That is why the amendment is so important.
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