Investing in families - Hypocrisy laid bare once again

THE Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development yesterday published a mammoth study on how families in 34 OECD countries shape themselves, how they work, how they cope with the world around them and how they are supported by the society they live in.

It would be easy to drown in its tsunami of detail but some findings jump from the page as they show us in a poor light. We might pretend these are unexpected or beyond our control but that would be, again, dishonest. Our support for families with children, lone parents with children and the tiny proportion of GDP we invest in families or children are rightly criticised. It shows that our great, back-of-the-lorry rhetoric about family being the cornerstone of society is not supported by the measures needed to make that declaration a reality.

We spent 2.6% of GDP on families in 2007, which was above the 2.2% OECD average. However, only 0.4% was spent on childcare services. The economic collapse of the intervening years has probably cut that tiny investment to something even less satisfactory.