Tories call for 'Victorian values'

Sunday, 10 December 2006 12:00 AM

The Conservative party are to launch a 'personal morality campaign' to stop the breakdown of traditional family units.

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith will tomorrow publish the findings of his report into social justice, which claims that the breakdown of families costs £20 billion a year.

The report, named Breakdown Britain, blames the collapse of the family for addiction, welfare dependency and educational failure.

Unmarried couples and single parent families are said to be the cause of many problems in society, according to the report.

The report also examines the prevalence of single parent families' in particular social groups, with 57 per cent of Afro-Caribbean families having one parent compared with 25 per cent of white households.

Mr Duncan Smith's discussion of the report in the Sunday Telegraph this weekend quoted the former Tory leader saying same-sex couples were "irrelevant".

He later denied this comment, saying: "I said that they were not relevant to the report of the social justice policy group because only a tiny number have children."

The campaign comes after comments from shadow attorney general Dominic Grieve praising the values of those living in the Victorian era.

Mr Grieve told the Observer that "our Victorian forebears succeeded in achieving something very unusual between the 1850s and 1900 in changing public attitudes by - dare one use the word - instilling moral codes. There was a much greater sense of shame in respect of transgressions."

He also suggested that those who physically confront teenage yobs should not be prosecuted.

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