the resentment and recriminations can have far-reaching and catastrophic effects on estranged partners and children alike. Rarely does a week go by without constituents consulting me about maintenance payments which have not been honoured, access arrangements which have broken down, and legal battles which sometimes continue for years on end. During the week of writing this I met a woman who told me how her husband walked out on her when she was four months pregnant. He has never bothered to show the slightest interest in their now six-month-old daughter, although he does want access to their twelve-year-old son (who does not want to see his father). She contested his attempt to divorce her but was told by a court official at Liverpool Crown Court that her attempts to fight for her marriage represented attitudes from 'the dark ages'. She was subsequently rebuked in court by a judge who told her that her feelings 'didn't enter into it'. Labour has increasingly argued that families are irrelevant in modern society, and that marriage should not be regarded as a permanent institution. A report from the Institute for Public Policy Research, the Labour Party's main source for new policy ideas, argues that two years is too long for couples to wait for a fault-free divorce. The authors of the 1990 report include Harriet Harman, MP, who is a Labour frontbencher, and Patricia Hewitt, a former advisor to Mr Kinnock. The Institute also argues for more publicly funded child care rather than tax relief to help parents who might prefer to stay at home. This is also the position of many members of the present Government. In contrast, European Christian Democrats say quite specifically in their 1989 European Manifesto, 'On the People's Side', that their objective is
to strengthen the importance of the family as the basic community. For us the family as a community for living and for teaching is the most important source of individual refuge and it is where values are transmitted, and where there should be solidarity and responsibility, with equality between parents and where each has autonomy and there is mutual respect for the aspirations of each.
How then might we hand more power to the family and strengthen its position? First, all government departments should have to produce a 'relationist' assessment of whether policies which they are pursuing are helping or hindering family life. Second, the divorce law should be reformed - not to make breaking up easier, but to make staying together easier. When a couple wed they should have to consider