A group of more than 40 Conservative MPs have called on Boris Johnson to put families at the heart of policy making.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, 44 Tory MPs are calling for a Ministry for Families to be created to promote the rights of single-earner families especially.

And in an article for the Sunday Telegraph, one of the MPs, Ranil Jayawardena, said all too often, politicians do not see the impact their decisions have on families.

One way this is revealed is the way politicians and wider society often look down on stay-at-home parents and in turn this means parents who make this decision feel undervalued.

The reality, as Mr Jayawardena points out in his article, is that stay-at-home parents benefit the economy to the tune of £1Trillion annually.

Part of the challenge is the way the current UK tax system works against one-earner families especially.

Using research produced by CARE in its Taxation of Families Report, Mr Jayawardena pointed out that the tax burden on a one-earner married couple with two children in the UK is 26 per cent higher than the rest of the OECD.

By contrast, single people pay eight per cent less tax than the OECD average.

Since 2008, CARE has made the case for reforming the tax system, so families are treated more fairly. No one should be penalised financially because they get married, start a family and one parent chooses to stay-at-home.

Last year, a report by UNICEF revealed that UK policies are some of the least family-friendly in the world.