A high official in the British government has stated that children coming from broken families had a nine-times-to-normal probability of committing criminal offences when compared to children coming from stable families. He also quantified the total expenditure incurred by the British government because of broken families as standing at £100 billion.

In an address to Relate, a national charity committed to human relations, the Secretary of State for Labour and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, said marriage breakdowns led to an explosion in the rate of criminality and doubled the chance that a person would live in a state of poverty. He said the fact that marriage and family life had been weakened had led to the country having to pay a bitter price in terms of greater poverty and poorer chances for the children of broken families.

Mr Duncan Smith’s address was described by the Daily Mail as “among the strongest defences of marriage from a leading official of the British government during recent years”. The same British paper said his speech placed him in direct contrast with his predecessors’ positions in governments led by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, who had insisted that marriage is not important and that the government should not interfere in people’s choices and how they organise their lives.

In the United Kingdom, about 40 per cent of marriages fail and end up in divorce whereas in recent years there has been a rise in the number of cohabiting couples, which, in Mr Duncan Smith’s view, has weakened the institution of the family.

The Liberal-Conservative coalition, of which Mr Duncan Smith forms part, promised it would be giving support to married couples in the country’s fiscal system.

Mr Duncan Smith added that “it is important that we recognise the role of marriage for building a strong society, especially if we want to give to our children the best chance in life. Evidence shows that the family influences success in education, in possibilities of finding work and even throughout life. When a government abandons a policy that supports the family, society has to pay a bitter price”.

Mr Duncan Smith referred to statistics drawn from various British sources and maintained that single-parent families, or those coming from broken families, have a double chance of living in poverty when compared with families with two parents. Also, that statistics show that two out of every three youths who commit criminal acts came from families with one parent. “It is only 30 per cent of youths who break the law that come from families with two parents” he said and added that “Children from broken families have nine times as much probability of breaking the law in their youth”.

The British politician insisted this is not a frivolous or abstract debate because “the family affects us all – what happens in our streets, in our communities and in our economy”. He reminded his listeners that what one learns in childhood influences one’s lifestyle.

He accepted that family circumstances do not necessarily rigidly determine an individual’s future and that there are in fact people who manage to overcome difficulties to achieve success. “But we would be fools to ignore the weight of evidence which shows the influence that family life can have on the future of children”.

According to Mr Duncan Smith, in every year Britain spends between £20 billion and £40 billion on broken families but when other factors are considered that have an impact on society, such as addictions, vices, criminality, lost productivity and loss of taxation income, “which are all difficult to quantify”, then “research suggests that expenditure on broken families can tot up to £100 billion”. This amount is almost equivalent to what the British government spends on public health.

I am indebted to Marija J. Borg and Peter Tortell for most of the above.

Dr Consiglio lectures in the University of Malta’s Faculty of Economics, Management and Accountancy.