In the wake of the referendum to introduce long over-due divorce legislation in Malta, there has been much discussion in Parliament on the need to strengthen the family and marriage. Sadly, with the propensity for missing the wood for the trees which our legislators seem to display in such abundance, the argument has been reduced to whether the Opposition’s excellent proposal to have a Standing Committee of the House specifically dedicated to the family should be a sub-Committee of the House Social Affairs Committee or a committee in its own right. Talk about re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic as it heads towards the iceberg.

The House Standing Committee for Social Affairs has done some good work. When I gave evidence before it as Lead Author of the report by The Today Public Policy Institute entitled “For Worse, For Better: Remarriage After Legal Separation”, I spent some time describing the unhappy state of marriage in Malta – supported by irrefutable statistical evidence – and what could be done to address the issues. I put forward a six-point programme of marriage and family support, which I described as ‘the minimum that the State should seek to implement’.

In the light of the current debate, it is instructive that the Standing Committee for Social Affairs showed no reaction then to my proposals for a six-point programme of improvement, either because they saw the family (as opposed to ‘social affairs’) as being peripheral to their remit, or because the recommendations made were, in their eyes, blinding glimpses of the obvious. (They are, yet they have still not been pursued by the government.)

The first recommendation I put forward to the committee is relevant to the current discussions in Parliament. It was that there was a need to establish a full-time Commissioner for the Family. It was proposed that this could be done in one of two ways: either by extending the terms of reference of the Commissioner for Children to include responsibilities for family policy, or by setting up a free-standing, full-time Commissioner for the Family. Whichever policy option was adopted, it was vital that the necessary human and financial resources for such a Commissioner be provided.

In the light of the debate of the last few weeks, and the current discussions in Parliament, there is no doubt in my mind that establishing a full-time Commissioner for the Family is the way to go. It follows that there should also be no argument that the Standing Committee in Parliament to oversee and scrutinise this vital area of Maltese life should also be free-standing and focused on family affairs, and not a sub-Committee of the Social Affairs Committee. Sensibly, the Prime Minister has seen this and it is the intention to set it up before the summer recess.

But, of itself, setting up a Standing Committee for the Family is not sufficient. The structures to implement good family policies must also exist. This is why the proposal for a full-time Commissioner for the Family, supported by the research ideas of a properly resourced Family Institute at university, is so obviously correct. The days when the government could simply pay lip service to this aspect of Maltese life are long over. There are thousands of people in Malta whose marriages have broken down. Together, they present an impressive statistic. But each individual marriage breakdown represents a human tragedy. The raw statistics alone cannot begin to tell the full story. They certainly cannot begin to express the suffering of all those who are involved in the breakdown – spouses, children and the extended family and social circle.

The reasons for this state of affairs in Malta are manifold. The rise in affluence and increasing financial demands and lifestyle pressures. An ethos of instant gratification and a culture of hedonism. A lower threshold of tolerance when marriages fail to come up to expectations, and a more sophisticated, educated, questioning, less disciplined and more acquisitive society, have all served to loosen family bonds.

The government has a duty to address these issues. A civilised society has to deal with the consequences of broken marriages as prudently, fairly and justly as possible by providing the legal remedies for a well-ordered process when marriages have clearly failed. This is the essence of the legislation that the sovereign people of Malta have decreed should now pass through Parliament. When marriages fail, the legal processes for coping with the fall-out should be as efficient and humane as possible.

But the State must also encourage and sustain the institution of marriage by giving the family unambiguous support. Society and the State have a vested interest in promoting stable marriages. The best answer must be to encourage good marriages built on solid foundations. The State should ensure through its fiscal policies and the financial means at its disposal that the tax benefit and social security benefit systems provide positive incentives for couples to get married and to stay married. The current government has shown a remarkable disposition to do little or nothing in this field. While efforts to improve family-friendly work practices have improved in the public service – and need to be greatly extended – this is not quite the same thing as fiscal incentives.

Preparations for marriage and the responsibilities of family life should be inculcated from an early stage. While those who marry in Church already attend an eight-week course of instruction – of variable standard – by the Cana Movement, there is a strong argument for extending these courses to those entering into a civil marriage (who are currently denied it), as well as their continuance with young married couples after they have married.

Moreover, the State should ensure that the provision of mediation, counselling and reconciliation services is greatly expanded. The reasons are two-fold. First to support marriages which may be in trouble and to seek to rescue them. But secondly, to underpin the legal framework for those marriages that fail irretrievably, leading to the civil dissolution of marriages. A comprehensive support infrastructure – family mediation which facilitates the ability of divorcing parents to settle their financial arrangements and places their children’s future at the centre of the process − should be put in place.

The over-riding purpose of such a system is to support the institution of marriage and to encourage the parties to a marriage in trouble to take all practical steps, whether through marriage counselling, comprehensive mediation or by other means to save the marriage itself, or if it has irretrievably broken down to bring it to an end with the minimum of distress to the couple or their children.

All these measures will cost money. But the cost to society of broken marriages is much higher without them, both socially and economically. One of the lessons of the divorce debate is that if the government is really serious about reversing the current shocking increase in family breakdowns, it must be prepared to take the steps necessary to salvage those marriages capable of being saved.