|TOP|The head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, has stepped into the growing row over the Scottish Executive’s plans for quicker divorces by backing MSPs opposing the changes.

The Executive has proposed to reduce separation times before a contested divorce from the present five years to just two years and for uncontested divorces to be reduced from three years to just one year, reports The Times.

The Scottish Parliament’ justice committee, however, agreed two weeks ago in favour of an amendment to the Family Law Bill that would bring the time for contested divorces to three years and uncontested divorces to 18 months.

|AD|The Cardinal’s public congratulation of the seven members of the justice committee for making a stand against the Executive’s plans are likely to intensify the debate as Labour and Liberal Democratic MSPs in the ruling Executive coalition struggle to resolve the issue.

Carinal O’Brien praised the committee members for “their sincere efforts in examining the issues at stake”, whilst also writing letters to Brian Adam and Fergus Ewing, two SNP MSPs, for their contributions to the debate despite not being members of the committee.

The Scottish cardinal commended Mr Adam and Mr Ewing, saying they had attempted “to uphold the importance of marriage in society” and describing their stance as courageous.

The debate could get messy for the coalition in the Executive with the committee’s position finding Conservative and Nationalist support, as well as several MSPs.

The cardinal’s comments in favour of the opposition will be particularly alarming to Labour, with many of its West of Scotland MSPs representing large Catholic communities.

With the coalition operating on a narrow majority of five, it will only take two or three Labour MSPs to give the no-vote for the divorce proposals to fail.