The following article was written by the Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader, Vince Cable, and originally appeared in today’s Mail on Sunday:

We keep hearing a smooth soundbite –  that we live in something called a ‘broken society’. Polls suggest that a majority of people agree. I just don’t believe it.

To be sure, there are occasional well-publicised horrors: ghastly crimes involving children; some estates where drug dealers terrorise the local population; some elderly or ill people who are isolated and neglected; some chaotic families with no stable relationships or discipline.

But I simply do not accept that these problems are typical. My own experience as a constituency MP is that the vast majority of people are law-abiding, live in stable relationships, care for their families and participate in their local communities.

Last week I attended a party organised by a voluntary group that helps the elderly and disabled by giving them lifts to shopping centres or appointments. Numerous people spend their spare time raising money for many charities.

Come the summer there will be fetes and carnivals, local schools have flourishing parent-teacher associations, hospitals have fundraising Friends, the Scout movement is growing and I notice that many local churches are increasingly populated by young families.

At weekends, parks and open spaces are full of sports clubs. Art, theatre and music societies are well supported. Most neighbourhoods have resident associations that kick up a fuss over planning and parking matters. Hardly evidence of a ‘broken society’.

I will be criticised for quoting experiences from a ‘middle class’, prosperous, suburban area. But most British people consider themselves ‘middle class’. 

Many schools will be holding fetes and events this summer

And while my Twickenham constituency has above average incomes and well above average levels of education, the examples I have given of voluntary work and community activity apply elsewhere – in gritty industrial areas as well as prosperous suburbs or countryside.

I am also struck by the fact that it is among the modest semi-detached and terrace houses and the former council estates that there is the greatest commitment to the network of volunteer drivers, the Scouts’ gang show and the St George’s Day parade.

There is a vast reservoir of civic pride and community spirit and it is insulting to say that these people belong to a ‘broken society’.

   So what on earth is meant by a ‘broken society’? Part of it is fear and loathing of the so-called ‘underclass’: the world of ‘sink estates’ supposedly populated by feckless, teenage single mothers on benefits; children who are out of control; rampant crime; drug addicts and alcoholics. Some of these problems undoubtedly exist but exaggerated fear of an underclass is nothing new.

Respectable Victorians were outraged by gin palaces and prostitution among the ‘undeserving poor’. There is undoubtedly a modern equivalent of that underclass and there is a depressing tendency, despite all the Government money thrown at the problem, for the problems of one generation to be passed on to the next.

Mothers who smoke tend to produce children who smoke. Homes without books produce children with poor reading skills. Sex abuse often stems from childhood experience.

The lazy assumption is that the position is hopeless; nothing can be done; society, or at least part of it, is broken beyond repair. In fact there are many examples of people overcoming their hardships.

We could talk about a ‘broken society’ if there were serious evidence that order and respect for the law were breaking down and crime was getting out of control. There isn’t.

Crime statistics can be confusing, not least because there are two separate sources based on crimes reported to the police and  surveys of the public. They often contradict each other. In the coming General Election these figures will be bandied about with little respect for the truth.

What we do know is that many of the crimes that worry people most – robbery, burglary, assaults, murder – are declining. My local police superintendent scratches his head in bafflement when all the evidence locally points to falling crime yet people’s fear of crime is growing. It is fed mainly by reports in the media of gun and knife crime that they will never encounter.

The other ‘evidence’ for a ‘broken society’ is teenage pregnancy. This is not a new problem. In the Sixties my teenage friends ran the gauntlet of getting ‘in the family way’ and some were caught out.

This was widely attributed to a moral collapse into the ‘permissive society’, the equivalent of today’s ‘broken society’.

What I dislike most about the ‘broken society’ message is that it distorts the facts for political advantage. Far worse, it breeds cynicism and despair in our basically decent and healthy society.

Britain is not broken. We need leaders to lift us up, not run us down.