Abolition of plastic bags takes priority over family support
Britain is suffering from an epidemic of family breakdowns affecting all levels of society from the Royal family downwards, says one of the country's most senior judges. Mr Justice Coleridge, who presided over the preliminary divorce hearings of Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, yesterday accused Gordon Brown of prioritising the abolition of plastic bags over support for families, and said the Government is 'fiddling while Rome burns'.
'Without being in any way over-dramatic or alarmist, my prediction would be that the effects of family breakdown on the life of the nation, and ordinary people, in this country will, within the next 20 years, be as marked and as destructive as the effects of global warming.
'We are experiencing a period of family meltdown whose effects will be as catastrophic as the meltdown of the ice caps.'
Judges are witnessing a 'never-ending carnival' of human misery, and almost all of society's social ills can be traced back to the collapse in family stability, he says. Many single mothers do a good job, but thousands of children are being raised by women who have several children by several fathers, none of whom stick around.
The judge, who has 37 years of experience of family law and is Family Division Liaison judge in the south-west legal circuit, stretching from Hampshire to Cornwall, was speaking in Brighton at the annual conference of Resolution, which represents 5,000 family lawyers.
His intervention - one of the most strongly worded of its kind by a serving judge in recent years - comes as new figures show marriage levels are at their lowest since 1862, and the number of children living with a single parent has doubled in 20 years. Lawyers say family courts are overstretched to the point of collapse.
Mr Justice Coleridge, 58, who is married with a daughter and two sons, is said that the family justice system - comprising social workers, local authorities, mental health specialists and legal experts - is all that stands between the present dire situation and 'social anarchy'. [Telegraph] 1437.3
