So now it's official. With our silly liberal attitudes we have raised a generation with the worst record in Europe for drug taking, alcohol abuse and smoking.

How many more reports like this week's European School Survey are needed before we come to our senses about bringing up children in Britain?

How many more times does it need to be repeated that the traditional family unit with a mother and father taking responsibility for their children must be the ideal at the heart of our culture?

The worrying report makes depressing reading. This should be a week of shame for all of us as it shows unequivocally how misguided we are.

And how revealing it is that on Saturday nights, only half of our 'parents' have the vaguest idea where their 15 and16-year-old children are or what they are getting up to.

As for Paul Boateng, Minister for Children and Young People, he has come up with the astonishing response to the revelations in the report that the level of abuse of drugs and alcohol by young people is of "continuing concern".

At least, as a member of a government which refuses to acknowledge marriage as the most important arena in which to raise children, he is being consistent.

He said this cannot just be a matter for government. Encouraging more responsible behaviour among the young, he felt, was a matter for parents, teachers, friends and communities.

He managed to stay 'on message' neatly avoiding the argument about government being an opinion leader. In its uniquely hypocritical way, this government has displayed a total lack of interest in promoting family values.

Of course, some would argue that a bad marriage is no place to bring up children - that parents who are violent, drunks, drug addicts, child abusers and all the rest of it are not fit to raise children. The argument has some logic.

However, to suggest then that children in such situations would be better off with homosexual or lesbian couples, or with single mothers or fathers, a degree of illogicality creeps in. Two or three wrongs do not make a right.

No one is suggesting that all marriages are havens of peace, tranquillity and love.

But the ideal of the stable marriage as the place to bring up stable children should be at the heart of government thinking and it is not.

Homosexual and lesbian relationships are notoriously fickle and, for the most part, short-lived.

The problems of drink, drugs and smoking are particularly bad among single parent families - and Britain has the highest rate of both single parent families and teenage pregnancies in Europe.

The results of this survey - among 60,000 teenagers in 30 European countries - are truly frightening. When the Archbishop of Westminster was created a Cardinal in Rome on Wednesday, how right and timely he was to say British society needs to rediscover its soul.