What does it say about our values when a judge is rebuked for speaking up for marriage?

Sir Paul Coleridge has been reprimanded by the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice, and found guilty of 'judicial misconduct'

A prominent High Court judge, Sir Paul Coleridge, has been reprimanded by the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice, and found guilty of ‘judicial misconduct’.

It is a serious ruling. Has Sir Paul been consorting with members of the criminal classes? Was he caught driving under the influence? Or perhaps he has delivered a spectacularly wrong-headed judgment?

The answer is that he has done none of these things, or anything at all reprehensible. The Judicial Conduct and Investigations Office, which acts on behalf of the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice, has taken exception to Sir Paul’s views on marriage, of which he is strongly in favour.

You may think he is accused of proselytising his opinions during court cases, but that is not the charge. No, Sir Paul has fallen foul of the authorities because he gave an interview to The Times newspaper almost exactly a year ago, and wrote a piece for the Daily Telegraph last June. For these little acts of candour he must be punished.

He suggested during the interview that the Government had spent too much energy in championing gay marriage, which he thinks is of minority concern, and too little energy in supporting married couples. But he emphasised that his independent charity, the Marriage Foundation, did not take a stance on gay marriage.

In the Telegraph article he took issue with a report which suggested that stable couples tend, whether married or not, to do equally well. He argued that this is beside the point. The crucial issue is that co-habiting couples are far more likely to break up than married ones, with all the resulting harm to children.

Until quite recently Sir Paul’s beliefs would have been shared by most judges. (He thinks they still are, but I have my doubts.) His views are empirical rather than sternly moralistic. As a judge in the family courts for more than a decade, he has seen at first hand the devastating consequences of family breakdown.

As he put it in a recent article he wrote for the Mail (for which he hasn’t been censured, or at least not yet), ‘study after study’ has shown that ‘the single most vital factor, by far, in the successful development of children is a committed, healthy relationship between their parents.’

And such a relationship, he observed, is far more likely to last if the couple are married. According to research carried out by his pro-marriage organisation cited in his article, ‘cohabiting parents account for only 19 per cent of all couples — but the separation of cohabiting parents makes up 48 per cent of all family breakdowns’.

What alarms me is that an intelligent man who has been presented with more evidence of family breakdown in his professional career than most of us, and who has studied and thought about the reasons for its rapid increase over recent years, should have had his knuckles publicly rapped by the Judicial Conduct and Investigations Office.

It goes without saying that judges should not make political remarks, but Sir Paul’s comments cannot be so construed. He was expressing his considered beliefs — beliefs that would have been held by about 99 per cent of sentient beings until quite recently.

Sir Paul suggested during an interview with The Times that the Government had spent too much energy in championing gay marriage and too little energy in supporting married couples

His crime, of course, was to veer off the official script. In such cases free speech is not allowed. My strong suspicion is that there would have been no reprimand from the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice had he expressed the now fashionable view that marriage is merely one of several lifestyle choices, none of which is preferable.

There were no official reprimands for Mr Justice Eady, or any discernible intake of breath, when in a series of judgments the learned judge appeared to place no particular importance on the institution of marriage.

In one case in 2006, he ruled that a cuckolded husband could not name a man (a famous sporting figure) who had seduced his wife. In Mr Justice Eady’s view, rights of privacy trumped natural sentiments of outrage at adultery. The legal estate of marriage was subservient, and seemingly not worth upholding.

Two years later, the same Mr Justice Eady took a relaxed, almost humorous, view of the deviant sexual antics of Formula One racing chief Max Mosley (a married man) in a mega-orgy in which blood was shed, women were beaten and other amazing practices took place.

I can’t say whether Mr Justice Coleridge’s views or those of Mr Justice Eady are more widely represented among the judiciary. But I do know that there is a marked reluctance among the political classes to do anything to uphold or strengthen marriage.

Deep in our political culture there is an unwillingness to strengthen marriage because it is widely regarded by our elite as just another lifestyle option

One way of achieving this is to give allowances to married mothers who stay at home to look after their children. Whereas those in Britain currently receive no support, mothers in Norway receive nearly £400 a month for a child up to the age of three, and in Germany parents who stay at home are paid two thirds of take-home salary up to a maximum of £1,520 a month for 14 months.

No wonder that, according to a study just published by the University of Trento, in Italy, stay-at-home mothers in Britain feel under twice as much pressure as those in the rest of Europe.

From April next year, some married couples in Britain will be able to make use of a transferable tax allowance worth £3.85 a week at most. This extremely modest innovation — indeed, some would call it footling — has been criticised by Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, and is known to be opposed by the Chancellor, George Osborne.

Meanwhile, as a result of this Government’s policies, families in which both parents work have been handed up to £1,200 a year for each child to help with childcare costs. It’s not a remotely even playing field.

The question is why, to a greater extent than anywhere else in Europe, our political class is unwilling to uphold marriage. I think it unlikely that Nick Clegg or George Osborne — or indeed the Lord Chancellor, Chris Grayling, or the Lord Chief Justice, Sir John Thomas, who have upbraided Sir Paul Coleridge — have had experiences that have turned them against the institution.

Why not do more to encourage it, then? The very same people who dispute that tax incentives can strengthen marriage have no doubt that tax measures can be used to influence other forms of human behaviour — for example, tax breaks to encourage saving and charity-giving, or penal duties on tobacco and alcohol.

The truth is that deep in our political culture there is an unwillingness to strengthen marriage because it is widely regarded by our elite as just another lifestyle option. The prevalence of such beliefs surely owes much to Britain’s status as the most secular, and irreligious, country in Europe.

Along comes Sir Paul Coleridge, cautiously and judiciously speaking in favour of society’s most important institution, and he is cut down by the judicial Establishment. A man who has served justice is rebuked and humiliated. Unsurprisingly, he has decided to thrown in his wig and robes five years before he is required to.