Parents 'blamed for underclass'

Parents who fail in basic duties such as cooking meals and putting children to bed were today blamed for creating the "underclass" who rioted last summer.

Charlie Taylor, the Government's behaviour czar, criticised families where children grow up "without boundaries and often without love".

The lack of basic parenting led children to fend for themselves or turn to gangs for a sense of belonging, Mr Taylor said. His message was backed by MPs who said parents had been allowing themselves to "slack off" with huge consequences.

Sources close to Education Secretary Michael Gove said they were "supportive" of Mr Taylor's stance. After the riots Mr Gove said gangs were recruiting from an "underclass" of lost souls failed by the education system.

Mr Taylor, headmaster of Willows special school in Hillingdon, highlighted figures which showed two thirds of rioting children brought before the courts had special educational needs and missed one day a week of school on average.

They were also more likely to live in the poorest areas and to have been excluded from school at least once. "We know who these children are. Many come from homes where their mothers and fathers have been unable to perform the most basic of parenting duties," he said in a speech to head teachers.

Mr Taylor told how a mother at his school had recently described how her eight-year-old son "Luke" helped himself to microwaved food from the fridge for dinner and went to sleep when he was tired from playing computer games.

"No meals, no bedtimes... It is children like Luke without boundaries and often without love who end up out on the streets by the time they are in their early teens."