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UK News

Christian Tory MP accuses Government of not taking families seriously

Fiona Bruce, who is the member for Congleton, has been speaking to Premier at the Conservative Party Conference.

She is unimpressed that the Government has not followed up on a promise to implement a 'family test', which was introduced last year.

Unveiling the idea in August 2014, the Government said: "The objective of the Test is to introduce an explicit family perspective to the policy making process and ensure that potential impacts on family relationships and
functioning are made explicit and recognised in the process of developing new policy."

A number of MPs are concerned that this test is not being used, citing a number of recent policy changes that have seen families hit hard.

They are looking to make the Government commit in law to using it on all legislation.

"I don't think they're taking it sufficiently seriously at all", Fiona Bruce said. "We're challenging the Government to stay true to the word they gave last year, that every piece of legislation would be put through a family test - 'does this legislation strengthen family life?'.

"That's what David Cameron said he wanted to see happen, but we're not seeing it."

She has pointed to the recent consultation put out for changes to Sunday trading laws.

She said: "We have a proposal that Sunday trading hours will be devolved to local authorities to see if they want to extend them. The family test needs to be applied to that.

"We need to see if it's likely that local authorities will be put under pressure to extend those hours - that's not going to be good for families."

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