"Almost all of society's social ills can be traced directly to the collapse of the family life."

A senior family court judge warned at the weekend of a "cancerous" increase in broken families that poses "as big a threat to the future of our society as terrorism, street crime or drugs."

Often when people try to make the case for supporting families, they are accused of attacking single parents. So it was important that Mr Justice Coleridge noted, "I am not saying every broken family produces dysfunctional children but I am saying that almost every dysfunctional child is the product of a broken family."

He made a number of specific recommendations, including placing family justice at the top of the political agenda; allocating more staffing and money to family issues; better funding for contact centres to aid family cohesion; and extensive reforms of the laws relating to divorce, cohabitation and financial relief.

Just a few days ago I was speaking with someone who confessed that his family would be financially far better off if he were to get divorced. Is this really the kind of signal that the government intends to send out?! If we are to reverse social breakdown, the government needs to remove the perverse disincentives in the fiscal system which are an obstacle to stable families. As we suggested last week, it is time to put families first!