Policy guide for civil servants to boost family life in the UK

Civil servants are to be required for the first time to check their policies to ensure they will promote family life in the UK.

The initiative is the brainchild of the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, who is in charge of family policy.

The guidelines set out five questions that all civil servants need to consider before they go ahead with a policy change.

The idea of a family impact assessment is not based on a preference for a particular kind of family, but will work from the presumption that strong and stable families are the foundation of society.

The questions include: “How does the policy impact families before, during and after couple separation?” and “How does the policy impact those families most at risk of deterioration of relationship quality and breakdown?”

Duncan Smith said: “This is the truest representation of government on the side of hard-working families in Britain – demonstrating a clear and unqualified commitment to strengthening and supporting family life for our children and for generations to come.”

David Cameron revealed in August that a families test would be introduced for all domestic government policy. The guidance published on Friday has been developed in consultation with Relationship Alliance and other families and relationships experts.

Although the five tests are broad and hardly binding on the civil service, ministers believe they could make civil servants think more broadly about the impact of a policy, just as they are required to consider whether a policy would be discriminatory.

The plan came as the shadow minister for disabled people, Kate Green, wrote to the government to ask whether ministers were considering cutting employment and support allowance (ESA).In her letter to the minister for disabled people, Mark Harper, Green asked whether the cuts were being planned because of the slow processing of ESA work capability assessments.

She wrote: “Your government’s policy on ESA is causing huge anxiety to hundreds of thousands of people”.