I concluded at the
time of the riots that of all the things the government now needed to do, it was the married family which most urgently needed to be rebuilt: I was and remain as certain of that as
anything I have ever written, and I have been saying it repeatedly
for over 20 years: I was saying it,
for instance, when I was attacking (in The Mail and also The Telegraph), as it went through the Commons, the
parliamentary bill which became that disastrous piece of (Tory) legislation called the Children Act 1989, which abolished parental rights (substituting
for them the much weaker «parental responsibility»), which encouraged parents not to spend too much
time with their children, which even, preposterously, gave children the right to take legal action against theirparents
for attempting to discipline them, which made it «unlawful
for a parent or carer to smack their child, except where this amounts to «reasonable punishment»;» and which specified that «Whether a «smack» amounts to reasonable punishment will depend on the circumstances of each case taking into consideration factors like the age of the child and the nature of the smack.»