Sunak rejects Tory MP's claim about marriage between men and women

Rishi Sunak does not agree with a Conservative MP's claim about the role of conventional family values in society, his spokesman has said.

Danny Kruger told a conference that marriages between men and women were "the only possible basis for a safe and successful society".

The Tory MP described marriage as "a public act" that "wider society should recognise and reward".

Mr Sunak's spokesman has distanced the prime minister from those remarks.

Mr Kruger - a former political secretary to Boris Johnson when he was prime minister - spoke in London at the National Conservatism Conference, an event organised by a right-wing think tank from the United States.

Mr Sunak's spokesman said although some ministers had chosen to speak at the event, that did not mean the government endorsed its agenda.

The National Conservatism Conference has brought conservative thinkers, politicians and journalists to Westminster and has heard speeches from senior Tories, including Home Secretary Suella Braverman and former Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Michael Gove, the communities secretary, spoke at the conference on Tuesday. The prime minister's spokesman said he would be speaking in a government capacity.

Speaking at the conference, Mr Kruger made the case to revive the brand of Conservatism that won his party the general election in 2019.

He ended his speech with what he called "three home truths" that "we need if we are to navigate these difficult times".

He said: "The second truth is that the normative family - held together by marriage, by mother and father sticking together for the sake of the children and the sake of their own parents and for the sake of themselves - this is the only possible basis for a safe and successful society.

"Marriage is not all about you. It's not just a private arrangement. It's a public act, by which you undertake to live for someone else, and for wider society; and wider society should recognise and reward this undertaking."

Andrew Boff, the Conservative chair of the London Assembly and a leading LGBT+ campaigner, told the BBC that Mr Kruger's language was "reminiscent of some of the diatribes that [Russia President Vladimir] Putin comes out with".

He said Mr Kruger "does not speak for the average Conservative", who want "stable families however they look to nurture young people and provide the building blocks of our communities".

Mr Boff said there was no doubt the Conservative Party believed in strong families, but "the definition of what that family is should not be down to any one religion, state or political splinter group".

The statement says: "The traditional family, built around a lifelong bond between a man and a woman, and on a lifelong bond between parents and children, is the foundation of all other achievements of our civilization."

One of the conference's organisers, James Orr, opened the second day of the event with a speech in which he described "the intact family" as "the best stable for forming flourishing, virtuous citizens".

He said: "It's why the family has always been the chief target of authoritarian regimes. It's why today, even here, children are exposed to norms and narratives imported from our cultural colonial overlords in the United States that are as poorly evidenced as they are politically partisan."

Liberal Democrat equalities spokesperson Christine Jardine said Mr Kruger's comments "show just how utterly out of touch the Conservative Party is with modern day Britain".

"Conservative MPs are happy to lecture families on how to live, while making life harder and harder for millions of families through the cost-of-living crisis and years of unfair tax rises," Ms Jardine said.

Labour's deputy leader, Angela Rayner, described the conference as "a carnival of conspiracy theory and self-pity"."Beneath the outward veneer of respectability, the Tories have nothing to offer the country beyond more failure, more excuses and more divisive politics," she said.