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Gay comments distorted, says IDS Cameron seeks to support families
(1 day later)
Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith has said same-sex couples are "irrelevant" to his work on shaping family policy for David Cameron. Conservative leader David Cameron has said families are the "ultimate source of our society's strength or weakness".
A Tory government should strengthen the unit of two hetrosexual parents raising a child, he told the Sunday Telegraph. He said his party must "look at ways of supporting families and also supporting marriage so that couples are encouraged to get together and stay together".
Same-sex partnerships do not "register on the Richter scale of how to bring up children", Mr Duncan Smith added. The UK would be better off with more marriages and fewer divorces, he added.
Mr Duncan Smith later said a factual response had been "distorted into an alleged slur on gay couples". Mr Cameron was responding to Iain Duncan Smith's Tory policy group's finding that family breakdowns cause social problems costing £20bn a year.
Mr Cameron sparked a backlash from traditionalists when he used his party conference speech this year to back civil partnerships. What we want is people bringing up children in a stable environment with two parents Iain Duncan Smith href="/1/hi/uk_politics/6166439.stm" class="">Hutton rejects family tax plan href="/1/hi/programmes/politics_show/6211432.stm" class="">Politics Show: Duncan Smith
But Mr Duncan Smith said his interview with the Sunday Telegraph had been taken out of context. Mr Cameron said the report "demonstrates clearly the links that exist between social breakdown, family breakdown, educational failure, indebtedness and drug and alcohol abuse".
I was asked about gay couples in the context of the scale and impact of family breakdown Iain Duncan Smith href="/1/hi/uk_politics/6161155.stm" class="">Tories warn on break-ups Mr Cameron added: "Families matter because almost every social problem that we face comes down to family stability.
His group, which is shaping Tory policy on poverty, publishes its interim report next week. "If marriage rates went up, if divorce rates came down - if more couples stayed together for longer, would our society be better off? My answer is yes."
It is expected to warn the break-up of co-habiting couples leads to severe social problems. 'Undermined'
And it is set to urge a "radical reappraisal" of marriage policy to prevent potential tensions leading to an increase in violent crime. Mr Cameron repeated his party conference speech pledge to test every Conservative policy on whether it helps families.
"I was asked about gay couples in the context of the scale and impact of family breakdown," Mr Duncan Smith said. During his conference speech he also said that when he referred to marriages being "special" he included same sex couples joined in a civil partnership.
"I said that they were not relevant to the report of the social justice policy group because only a tiny number have children." Mr Cameron's welcome of the policy group's report came as Mr Duncan Smith rejected criticism for telling the Sunday Telegraph that same-sex couples were "irrelevant" to his work on shaping future Conservative policy on tackling family breakdowns.
A Conservative Party spokesman said it was possible studies would find such family relationships were relatively stable. Mr Duncan Smith: Labour has undermined marriage
He told the BBC that he had not been making a value judgement on gay couples, merely reflecting the fact so few children were raised by gay couples.
Stability and structure was vital, he said, so "if they are bringing them up well, well done and good luck to them".
Mr Duncan Smith told the Politics Show his group had found that, while divorce had remained steady in recent years, there had been a large rise in the numbers of cohabiting parents who split up.
"What we want is people bringing up children in a stable environment with two parents," he said, adding that heterosexual couples "are clearly the issue here" as they are raising by far the majority of children in the UK.
'Through the roof'
Mr Duncan Smith said marriage had been undermined by the tax and benefits system under the current Labour government.
He said the current report was about finding out what the problems were and what had gone wrong - not to lecture people to get married - but to help couples, married and unmarried, to stabilise their relationships.
Pressed on the Politics Show about policies, Mr Duncan Smith said they would now look in detail at the issue of policy to tackle the problems identified.
But for Labour, the work and pensions secretary John Hutton said it sounded like the Conservatives were going "back to basics again" and talking about Victorian values.
He said it was "nonsense" to suggest that tweaking the tax system could lead to families staying together, saying that had been tried in past decades which saw divorce rates "go through the roof".