Wrong. The cold facts are published today in a briefing paper compiled by the Policy Research Bureau for a charity called the Family Holiday Association (FHA). One in three British families can’t afford a week away, and one in five can’t even have days out. Two and a half million children don’t get so much as a trip to the seaside. A tiny number may live in places where there are trees and streams, but most don’t; and urban Britain is a sad place if you have no money and no respite. It seems hard that those who live in the nastiest places anyway get the fewest breaks from them. You need memories of a good week to carry you through 51 difficult ones.

I should declare a long-term interest here. In the late 1970s I helped to sell Christmas cards in the incongruous surroundings of the Trocadero at Piccadilly, lured by a cheerful couple called Pat and Joan Laurance. They had just founded a tiny charity because, they explained as they bustled with leaflets, it had occurred to them that while families beleaguered by illness, poverty or strenuous caring could get Department of Social Security help with “things such as washing machines ”, what they really needed was a nice week’s holiday. Before they began in 1975 quite a few borough councils helped with such holidays: this was vanishing under budget pressure.

What struck the Laurances strongly was the frequent report from families and social workers that the simple holiday week could “spread” over much more of the year. Families talked about it in advance, chippy children worked and saved up, grandparents joined in, and for months afterwards everyone shared memories of the laughs and the novelty. All these things assuaged the difficulty of life, fostered optimism and made children do better in school. I was haunted at the time by two cases of parents committing suicide and taking their children with them: listening to the Laurances it struck me that if you had a memory of your child laughing on a beach that would be at least a bit harder to do.

Nearly 20 years on, their Family Holiday Association has grown, has funded more than 100,000 holidays, and owns seven static caravans to provide peak-season accommodation for large families. Referrals flood in from social workers, health visitors, doctors, and charities such as Barnardo’s. Most involve serious poverty, long-term illness, terrible housing or recovery from abuse. Recipients report, among other things, exquisite tact: one social worker remarked gratefully on the absence of a “patronising and obstructive” attitude to families that she found in some other charities. Still, every year they have to turn down deserving requests.

You may well know about them, from this paper and others. But today’s issue goes beyond charity. The briefing paper is a lobbying exercise: to promote the concept of “social tourism” funded not merely by charity but by the State. John McDonald, the FHA director, says that it “should be viewed as an integral part of social and welfare policy” and not only for disabled people. The briefing paper calls social tourism “an idea familiar to the rest of Europe but relatively new in the UK”.

And indeed there are models overseas: in France, people paying less than a certain amount of income tax are encouraged to save up chèques vacances — topped up tax-free by employers and subsidised by the State — towards the cost of travel and leisure. The poorest can get bourse vacances — full grants. In Belgium last year the Flanders tourist office helped 10,000 disadvantaged people to take a holiday. In both cases there is a hard-headed aspect to the scheme: these are holidays in the home country, which assist the domestic tourist industry and regional development. That makes it sound like a win-win idea: the health and mental well-being of families improve, and beleaguered domestic resorts get a slice too.

It will be interesting to see which politicians take it up. With the Conservative Party daring to talk of redistribution and “empowering people at the bottom of the heap to have a larger share of an enlarging cake”, it could be the Tories. Or it could be Gordon Brown. There will, of course, be caterwauling from the robust Right: why, it will ask, should welfare extend so far beyond food, lodging and health? What has the State to do with bucket-and-spade holidays? There will inevitably be fears about cheating, and profiles of ne’er-do-well families misbehaving or exploiting the system; someone will find a rich runaway father sunning himself in Thailand with his latest floozie, avoiding maintenance payments while his family is sent on holiday by the taxpayer. There will be mutterings about the bottomless pit of welfare spending, and affirmations that frills such as this are for charities to provide, not ministers.

Yet the idea is not new. People have always needed circuses as well as bread. Victorian philanthropists conveyed poor families to the sea in charabancs. Industrial magnates organised grand days out for the workforce. Until the Seventies borough councils offered holiday grants. We are aware of the dangers of having families break up under stress, of the intangible benefit of happiness and the social and medical cost of depression. We know the ill-effects on schoolchildren of feeling left out. We know how travel — even near home — broadens our own sympathies and fosters understanding. Listening to the FHA arguments may join a few dots: in which case, Pat and Joan Laurance — still thriving in their eighties — would become an honourable footnote in British history. Happy new year.

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