Tories concerned over falling rate of marriages due to soaring cost

London: Marriage in Britain is in danger of becoming an exclusive middle-class institution unless action is taken to bolster it, David Willetts, the shadow cabinet member responsible for the family, said Wednesday.

Willetts said it would be "extremely dangerous if marriage became something only for the affluent elite" and that the rate of family break-ups was a disaster for children.

The Conservatives are due to publish their ideas on family in a discussion paper arguing the state and voluntary sector can do more to help fathers in relationships, especially at the birth of the first child. The party will also back recognition of marriage in the tax system, as well as providing relationship advice at civil marriage ceremonies.

The paper will propose changes in the law to make it easier for grandparents and fathers to stay in contact with children when marriages break up.

Willetts insisted there was measurable evidence to show that married couples with children stayed together longer to the benefit of children.

"The aspiration of marriage is becoming harder to achieve. Instead of it becoming just what you do in your 20s, it has become like scaling Mount Everest, a sort of great moral endeavour and something that requires a lot of time and money. We think we need to ease some of the pressures," he said.

"There is quite a lot of evidence coming from America about how we are in danger of heading towards a society where middle-class people get married and people on low and erratic incomes don't get married, and that in turn leads to a divergence of a whole host of other outcomes.

"In my view it would be extremely dangerous if marriage became something only for the affluent elite and that is what will happen, unless we try to get some kind of policy that restores it as a more widespread institution as we had in the past."

Research shows that less educated women born after 1960 have a divorce rate 30 per cent higher than that of the better educated. They are also more likely to have a child outside a live-in partnership. The figures and trends are even more pronounced in the US.

One explanation for the middle-class bias towards marriage in the US, Willetts said, was the fact that there were fewer eligible working-class males, owing to deskilling of societies.

Latest UK evidence shows marriage rates are at a historic low, with only 270,000 people married last year compared with 480,285 at the peak in 1972.