'Tax Breaks For Marriage A Return To Fifties'

Nick Clegg has told Sky News that tax breaks for marriage will not encourage more couples to tie the knot - as his coalition partners push for the benefit.

Ahead of a speech to think tank Demos on social issues, the Deputy Prime Minister accused Conservative ministers of seeking a return to the 1950s.

He told Sky News' Murnaghan show: "As a liberal, I just think there are limits as to how much the state should try and micromanage and incentivise people's own behaviour in their private life.

"Most people get married because they love each other, not because they have looked at their tax returns and seen that they are going to get some cash back from the state.

"My own view is that it is undoubtedly the case that children thrive best when they see their parents are happy together and they have got both mothers and fathers to help in their upbringing.

"We need to get away from the idea that something on a piece of paper that says if you are married that is good and if you are not married it is not.

"At the end of the day deciding to get married is something that should be regarded as a private decision."

Tory backbenchers are pressing for an election pledge to introduce transferable tax allowances worth up to £150 a year to be implemented within this parliament.

The move - personally championed by David Cameron in the run-up to the election - survived into the coalition deal but with a clause allowing the junior partner to sit out any Commons vote.

Mr Clegg has told the Demos think tank: "We should not take a particular version of the family institution, such as the 1950s model of suit-wearing, bread-winning dad and aproned, home-making mother - and try and preserve it in aspic.

"That's why open society liberals and big society conservatives will take a different view on a tax break for marriage.

"We can all agree that strong relationships between parents are important, but not agree that the state should use the tax system to encourage a particular family form.

"Conservatives, by definition, tend to defend the status quo, embracing change reluctantly and often after the event."

Mr Clegg argued that liberal values are more important than ever as the world faces deep economic uncertainty and risks turning inwards.

"The danger in the UK is that the forces of reaction and retreat overwhelm our instinct for openness and optimism. That we succumb to fear - the greatest enemy of openness - in these dark economic times."

UK politics and economics is "distorted by unaccountable hoards of power, wealth and influence: media moguls; dodgy lobbyists corrupting our politics; irresponsible bankers taking us for a ride and then helping themselves to massive bonuses; boardrooms closed against the interests of shareholders and workers," he said.

Labour former prime minister Tony Blair was right to argue that the "big difference is no longer between left and right, it is between open and closed," Mr Clegg added.

The Lib Dem leader made it clear that he considers David Cameron's Big Society agenda to be "broadly compatible with the liberal concept of an open society".

But the Tories do not recognise that societies can be "oppressive" as well as the state and that power is better invested in individuals, he will add.

Mr Clegg's stance has come under fire from the Centre for Social Justice think tank, which was founded by now Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith .

Executive director Gavin Poole said: "Nick Clegg's stance flies in the face of all the evidence, completely ignoring national and international data demonstrating how important marriage is to the health and well-being of children and families."