Lord Farmer, a committed Christian, has called for the appointment creation of a ‘minister for family breakdown’ to tackle the huge problems facing the nation. He grew up in a chaotic family with alcoholic parents but became a successful businessman. In a newspaper article he refers to the ‘devastating effect of family breakdown upon the lives of young people that affect their ability to succeed in life.’ He said that all government departments experience the cost of family breakdown, and all political parties are guilty of causing the current problems. Some people say there is nothing wrong with the family; it has just changed to first marriages, remarriages, cohabiting couples, lone-mother families, lone-father families, stepfamilies, multi-parent families and multi-sibling families. Lord Farmer said these ‘reconstituted’ families not only place a stress on the adults involved, but have strongly negative effects upon the children, in terms of health, education, peer group relationships and life chances.