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When New Labour came to power in 1997, they had a handy slogan for their educational policies: ‘standards, not structures’. It was more important, they argued, to focus on raising standards inside schools rather than muck about with the overall structure of the education system itself: convenient, too, because it avoided having to make any troublesome decisions over grammar schools. As policies go it had the unusual honour of being publically disavowed rather than quietly dropped, and the government soon set about upon a noble quest to make the already rather contorted structure of the nation’s schools that little bit more unfathomable by the year. The rest, as they say, is history.

Well, I thought I’d attempt to rescue the phrase from oblivion, because it occurred to me that whilst it was a wretched failure for education it does happen to perfectly describe how we should look at another contemporary debate surrounding the upbringing of children: the role of the family.

What makes a good parent? There’s clearly no perfect answer, and the truth is that a good parent is one who manages to improvise with both luck and skill. But I’m fairly confident that most people would agree that a good parent is one who loves, who disciplines, who teaches, guides and provides support when things go wrong. A good parent strikes the right balance between taking care of a child and letting them go, establishes trust, respect and – one would hope – a lifelong bond.

All pretty uncontroversial stuff. What still appears to be more controversial with some people is the fact that the precise structure of the family in which this happens matters about as much as the layout of the family’s garden shed. Sure, a heterosexual mother and father might be the most commonly occurring pattern, but does that make a single parent, gay couple or foster family any worse for being rarer? Of course not. The standard of parenting is the one and only important thing, and – humans being as they are – that’s something which will always vary across all types of families.

This is why it was such good news that MPs successfully defeated an amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill this week which would have retained the discriminatory ‘need for a father’ wording used to restrict the use of IVF by single women and lesbian couples. It’s another legal step – as with civil partnerships – which quite clearly manoeuvres the law firmly out of arbitrating which family structures are preferred over others: an arena in which it quite simply does not belong.

There were, unexpectedly, some pretty odd arguments against the move. Some claimed that it was aimed at eliminating the role of fathers altogether, which is about as silly as saying that the government should legislate against only children to preserve the role of siblings. If there is a father, than that father will have a role; if there is no father in anything other than a strictly biological sense – as is the case with a lesbian couple – then there is no role for a father. It’s as simple as that. Others insisted that the clause simply ensured that a lesbian couple would consider the need to have some sort of male role model. Whilst I would agree that male role models are generally a good thing to have, it is frankly bizarre to expect such a thing to be enshrined in legislation: why not legislate that any single mother has to provide male role models, too? Who would enforce this, the Office for Male Role Models? Let’s just go the whole hog and have an Office for Good Parenting complete with twice-yearly inspections and the ability to levy fines against any parent found ignorant of the procedures of the naughty step. It is genuinely insulting to potential lesbian parents to single them out for legal lessons on how to bring up their children, as if this is something which wouldn’t be considered before embarking on the not exactly trivial procedure of IVF.

But a few voices distinguished themselves in the desperation of searching for a respectable concern. Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith was insistent that fathers filled the valuable role of showing their daughters that it was possible to have a loving relationship with men which didn’t involve sex. Presumably having two lesbian mothers wasn’t considered a similar indication that sex with men wasn’t an insurmountable fact of life. This was nothing, mind you, compared to Iris Robinson of the DUP, who opined on the horror of a child “going into the parents’ bedroom and finding two women making love or two men making love”.

It takes a pretty blinkered form of homophobia to forget that the standard of ‘not having sex in front of your child’ is one which really should be common to all parents, regardless of family structure.

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There was a certain irony in the fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury’s poorly thought out invitation to implement portions of Islamic law in Britain provoked such a united display of condemnation. In a country which is supposedly so conspicuously lacking a shared culture, we saw secular liberals, conservative pundits, briefly united political parties and the general public of every faith and none joining together to make the simple cry: one law for all. We might all differ wildly on what that law should be, but on that – at least – we all seem to be in agreement, the Archbishop notwithstanding.

Reach a little wider and the consensus falls apart. Newspapers make great hay out of the evils of ‘political correctness’, which apparently has been waging unceasing war on such things as heterosexuality, the English language and Christmas. I can’t say I’d noticed a conspicuous shortage, but there you are. Outside the pages of tabloids there is some more serious questioning of multiculturalism, although I have to say I still think it’s a conversation largely between journalists and politicians. Nevertheless, issues surrounding how far we accommodate different cultures and\or whether we have – or need – a national common identity are real enough, even if the answers so far have been limited to bizarrely silly plans for a few more flags, ceremonies and mottos.

I believe in multiculturalism, and it doesn’t particularly concern me whether people identity with abstract notions of what it means to be British. As far as I’m concerned, you can listen to whatever music you want, support whatever football team you want and even speak whatever language you want as long as you don’t interfere with other people’s rights to do the same. Nevertheless, I do think that an important part of the answer for more cohesive communities lies in a very simple idea: shared spaces. This isn’t a tired debate on the merits of public versus private ownership, for almost everyone agrees that in-between our private houses, private workplaces and private leisure facilities there will always exist a little communal space which we all have to use.

Without wanting to bore anyone about the London mayoral elections (full disclaimer: I’ve campaigned for Ken Livingstone) the example of London’s transport system is a strong one. London is the only major city in the world to have achieved a notable shift from private to public transport in recent years, and I believe that this is important for more than purely the environmental benefits. Take the buses. There will always be a core of people who have no choice but to travel by bus, but if buses become a genuinely shared space – the poor and dispossessed travelling alongside the rich and comfortable – then there will be both the money and the political pressure to improve services for everyone. It’s not a hopeless fantasy: people from every different walk of life already use the Tube to get to work.

It’s the same for state education and healthcare. A number of people have claimed to me that by going private they’re actually doing the state a favour: that’s one fewer hospital bed or school place for the state to find, they argue. But this ignores the value of maintaining shared public spaces. First, because those who can afford to go privately are often the ones who will be most vocal in demanding and effecting change in the public sector. And secondly, because shared spaces are also a shared national culture which isn’t imposed on top of communities but develops organically from their equal participation. Rather than wasting time on the abstract – the flags, the pledges – we should encourage a country which forms its own identity from real things, like children learning together in shared schools.

You can’t force people to use shared spaces, and you shouldn’t have to. No-one should take the bus or use the NHS with a haughty sense of martyrdom: they should be high quality services which are attractive in their own right. And the danger of abandonment always looms large with shared spaces: think of a housing block, neglected and unloved after the initial political optimism in building it has long faded away. But there will always be people left behind after others have escaped – and there will always be people on the bus. If we invest in these services and design them to be used by everyone, then I believe we will gain not just improved public spaces but an improved public spirit too.

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