In his new year speech, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that ‘family matters’ and pledged to roll out Family Hubs to offer parents support in raising children.

The speech was billed as Mr Sunak’s vision for the UK over 2023 with five key pledges made on immigration, inflation and the NHS, national debt and innovation.

Towards the end of the speech, the PM acknowledged that ‘family is something politicians struggle to talk about because you can all too readily be pilloried for being out of touch or worse, hostile to those who don’t conform to some idealised form.’

Citing clear evidence that ‘strong, supportive families make for more stable communities and happier individuals’, Mr Sunak praised the love of his own family.

He went on to say that the UK Government wanted to support parents in managing the demands of work without weakening family life.

Moreover, he said that ‘family – not just government’ can help us answer the profound questions we face as a country’.

What should we make of this?

On the one hand, it’s encouraging to hear the prime minister talk about the importance of families. He’s also right to say evidence shows how important stable families are.

Family Hubs, which he promises to roll out, are not new. But the implementation of them has been patchy and stalled. If he sticks to his word, these will help parents especially.

At the same time, there must be clear action as a result of these words. In the Christian worldview, family is one of the great building blocks of society. It is part of God’s design for humanity and when it works, it can be the difference between getting on in life and struggling.

For decades, CARE has also highlighted how the current income tax system discriminates directly against one-earner families especially. This means that many parents don’t have the choice of staying at home and making childcare their priority. We’ve argued that the government should give parents genuine choice by making it financially easier for parents to choose to stay-at-home if that’s what they want to do.

It will take more than good words to address family breakdown and support parents by giving them real choice. The real test is whether the prime minister will match his rhetoric with concrete action.