A senior UK judge has
warned that getting a divorce is easier than getting a driving licence and that high rates 
of divorce and cohabitation are
harming British society.
Sir Paul Coleridge, a
Family Division judge, suggested people need to get better informed as to the
importance of stable relationships for the general good of society, the Daily
Telegraph reports.
And he said that
nearly four million children are estimated to be caught up in the family justice
system, with no sign of that number coming down.
“Everyone in the
land, from the Royal Family downwards, is now affected by family breakdown,” he
told BBC Radio 5 Live.
“It affects the lives
of children themselves, it affects the lives of their parents … the wider
family gets caught up in it.
“It then ripples out
to the local community, the schools and then into the wider community.”
Social changes over
the last 50 years, including a shift in attitudes towards cohabitation and
having children out of wedlock, were behind the problem, he
said.
“On the whole
(cohabitation) was regarded as something you didn’t do, to have a child utside
marriage, so that created a framework that stopped very much breakdown,” he
said.
“We’ve had a cultural
revolution in sexual morality and sexual behaviour.”
Asked if it was too
easy to get divorced, he said: “Divorce is easy in the sense that obtaining a
divorce is easier than getting a driving licence.
“It’s a form-filling
exercise and you’ll get your divorce in six weeks if everyone
agrees.”
“In about 1950 you
weren’t allowed in the royal enclosure at Ascot if you were divorced,” he said.
“That now would exclude half the Royal Family.”
High rates of family
breakdown was a problem that society had failed to properly address but one that
required urgent action, he added.
“We need to have a
reasonable debate about it and decide what needs to be done – and I don’t mean
(by the) Government,” he said. “They didn’t cause the
problem.”
The change in social
attitudes over the past five decades had given people “complete freedom of
choice”, he said.
This was “great” when
they behaved responsibly, he added, but some seemed to think it was a
“free-for-all”.
He accepted that
stable relationships outside of marriage were possible and insisted it was
“nothing to do with morality”, but pointed out that the rate of family breakdown
among unmarried couples was far higher than among married
ones.
It was statistically
proven that parents were far more likely to stay together until their children’s
16th birthday if they were married, he said.
Judge Coleridge has
spoken out about the issue before, sparking controversy in 2008 when he said
family relationships in Britain were in “meltdown” and likened the problem to a
“cancer”.
He voiced his
concerns again the following year, calling for action to achieve a “fundamental
change” in individual attitudes and behaviour to re-establish marriage as the
“gold standard” for relationships.