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"And so what we’re saying is the system at the moment is jigged against married couples and we want to set that right, not to give lone parents a bad deal, because they won’t get a reduction."

In a speech responding to the policy report this afternoon, Mr Cameron backed the proposals, claiming the breakdown of marriage was making Britain a "broken society" - but said final policies would only be drawn up by the party after a debate "over the next few months" in a public consultation campaign called Stand Up and Speak.

"Above all, I welcome this report's emphasis on the family, and on marriage as the basis for the social progress we all want to see," he told an audience at Kids Club, a charity for inner city children.

"My family, and my marriage, are quite simply the most important things in my life. They mean absolutely everything to me, and I believe that strong families matter more than anything else in our society.

"If we get the family right, we can fix our broken society. Britain is almost the only country in Europe that doesn't recognise marriage in the tax system, and at the same time we have a benefits system actually encourages people to separate and live apart."

Another key recommendation of the report is a controversial £400 million tax on alcohol to pay for a doubling of the amount spent on drink and drugs treatment, in a bid to combat binge-drinking.

"I was not a particular supporter of that when we first started to look at it. But as we looked at what other countries are doing, as we looked at the connection between the cost of alcohol relative to income, we found that really it’s never been lower, almost since living memory, since the 1900s," Mr Duncan Smith said.

"Most of the experts now reckon there is a correlation between the absolute price, particularly among children.

"60 per cent of 16-year-olds are binge drinking. We know the connection between that level of drinking and illegal drugs is absolute and they’re going to be doing that as well. So we’ve got to be looking at re-setting the balance. It’s not going to be popular, I accept that."

Other recommendations set out in the report include:

* Increasing the scope of credit unions providing low-interest loans to low-income families in an attempt to save them from loan sharks;

* Making volunteering part of the school curriculum and rewarding youngsters who undertake community work with tickets for pop concerts;

* Raising the gambling age limit from 16 to 18 and requiring the gaming industry to spend more than £10 million a year on research into anti-addiction programmes;

* Charities and parents to be allowed to set up new "pioneer schools", set up as charities, free of local authority control, and able to recruit staff and set pay levels.

Today’s publication marks the culmination of 18 months of research by Mr Duncan Smith’s team, which is one of several policy review groups set up by Mr Cameron shortly after he became leader in a bid to devise election-winning policies. Its findings are expected to form one of the main planks of his manifesto for the next national poll.

Asked whether the issue tax breaks for married couples would also apply to civil partnerships, the gay unions controversial among many from the Tory right, Mr Duncan Smith said that civil partnerships, introduced by Labour, were now a reality.

"My view is that civil partnerships are here to stay," he said, "but it will be up to the Conservative Party as to what they do about them."

The proposals came under immediate fire from anti-poverty campaigners, among them Kate Green, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group. "A marriage certificate does not end addiction, it does not cure a mental health condition, it does not cancel debt, it does not increase skills and qualifications and it does not provide employment," she said.

Ed Miliband, the Social Exclusion Minister, said that the proposals would damage children. "I don’t think that paying £20 a week to all married couples in this country - which would cost billions of pounds and I’m got no idea how Iain would pay for it - is the right thing to do," he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

"What we should be doing is supporting children. We shouldn’t be saying because of the decisions your parents have made, whether a spouse has left another, that children should lose out, and whatever Iain says that is the implication."

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