The views expressed by John Blunt are not necessarily those of this newspaper

WILL someone kindly tell me what Labour's policy on helping families is - or what it actually means by 'family'?

For despite the pledge of St Tony Blair, the nation's new moral icon, to put the family at the heart of government policy, the reality seems the opposite.

Just five days ago, to much fanfare, the Prime Minister was hailing the end of the something-for-nothing welfare system as all benefits claimants would have to turn up for interviews that would make them seek jobs not Giros.

But, bang in line with the prediction I made the same night to my politics-watching pals at the pub, the very next day, the nation's 1.6 million-strong army of single mothers was given a let-off despite it costing the country £10 billion a year to have them stop at home living off the state. Instead of having to take a job if there's one going, they will merely have to listen to a pep talk from some "personal adviser" on how to go about finding a job if they feel like it.

And there was Tony saying that the automatic right to benefit will go. He'll tell us anything.

But having already seen one ballyhooed crackdown on scrounging single parents turn into a backdown, this newest one should not come as a surprise. But what is galling is that this bunch of benefit-drawers now looks like booming even more with Labour's blessing, even though Britain is already up to its neck in single parents and their 2.8 million born-out-of-wedlock brood. It's a fact that nine out of ten babies born to teenage mothers are illegitimate. Two out of three with mothers under 24 are the same.

It is established, too, that these children are twice as likely to end up in trouble, fail at school, become involved in crime and drugs, suffer poor health or commit suicide - all the stuff of the 'social exclusion' and the problem-riddled sink-estates the government piously promises to combat.

Yet, for all its fine talk about supporting the family, it is this lot and all the ills they create in society that the government is actually encouraging.

For among the series of leaks this week on Chancellor Gordon Brown's Budget, which were aimed at softening the blows to come, was one that revealed plans to scrap the married couple's tax allowance, or what's left of it.

But if this makes nonsense of Labour's backing for the real family, its purpose spits on traditional family values from a great height. For we are told that the savings will be ploughed into big increases in child benefit.

It's bad enough that this allowance is handed out to millions who do not need it - as Labour's own proposals to tax that paid to well-off families make plain. But if there was ever a message that said to the hordes of feckless single parents: "Carry on having kids that are the next generation's thick, unemployed criminal underclass - we'll make it worth your while," it's this tax attack on the traditional family.

'Family,' according to Labour, means the opposite of what it should - and what it pretends to uphold. Its the decent, two-parent family that is on the receiving end of the government's social exclusion. What hypocrites!

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.