Prime Minister Tony Blair today rejected calls to put marriage at the heart of social and family policy. Rejecting Conservative Party leader David Cameron’s suggestion that family breakdown and fatherlessness were at the heart of Britain’s social ills, Mr Blair said that anti-social problems were not limited to fatherless families.

Specific intervention was needed to target dysfunctional families whose “kids have gone off the rails”, he added.

His remarks were echoed by Education Secretary Alan Johnson, who said that family policy shold not discriminate in favour of traditional marriage. Taxation and law, Mr Johnson said, “does not create strong families, love and compassion does”. He also blasted the Married Families Allowance as “pernicious and judgemental”.

The remarks are a significant change of tone for the Government. Previously, Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton had said that two parents were better than one for children and that the benefits system militated against marriage.

These latest comments come as the political debate over marriage hots up. Conservative Party leader David Cameron has made promoting marriage central to his party’s message. Just last week, he again stressed the importance of marriage in the context of a spate of shootings in London which led to three teenagers being killed.

Gun crime, Mr Cameron suggested, was directly linked to the problem of fatherlessness and family breakdown. It is thought that Prime Minister Tony Blair is concerned that the Conservative leader’s argument carries some resonance. Many Labour MPs, including some close to Chancellor Gordon Brown, argue that Mr Blair has not done enough to defend single parents.