The Government believes that strong and stable families of all kinds are the bedrock of a strong and stable society. That is why we need to make our society more family friendly, and to take action to protect children from excessive commercialisation and premature sexualisation.

• We will maintain the goal of ending child poverty in the UK by 2020.

• We will reform the administration of tax credits to reduce fraud and overpayments.

• We will bring forward plans to reduce the couple penalty in the tax credit system as we make savings from our welfare reform plans.

• We support the provision of free nursery care for pre-school children, and we want that support to be provided by a diverse range of providers, with a greater gender balance in the early years workforce.

• We will take Sure Start back to its original purpose of early intervention, increase its focus on the neediest families, and better involve organisations with a track record of supporting families. We will investigate ways of ensuring that providers are paid in part by the results they achieve.

• We will refocus funding from Sure Start peripatetic outreach services, and from the Department of Health budget, to pay for 4,200 extra Sure Start health visitors.

• We will investigate a new approach to helping families with multiple problems.

• We will publish serious case reviews, with identifying details removed.

• We will review the criminal records and vetting and barring regime and scale it back to common sense levels.

• We will crack down on irresponsible advertising and marketing, especially to children. We will also take steps to tackle the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood.

• We will encourage shared parenting from the earliest stages of pregnancy – including the promotion of a system of flexible parental leave.

• We will put funding for relationship support on a stable, long-term footing, and make sure that couples are given greater encouragement to use existing relationship support.

• We will conduct a comprehensive review of family law in order to increase the use of mediation when couples do break up, and to look at how best to provide greater access rights to non-resident parents and grandparents.