One of Britain’s most senior judges has blamed a decline in religion and traditional moral values for the growing number of laws needed to maintain order.
Lord Sumption, a Supreme Court Justice, said laws now reached into areas of life once left untouched by such regulation with 3000 new criminal or administrative offences added to the statute book during Tony Blair’s premiership between 1997 and 2007.
But he claimed the “expansion of the empire of law” had been necessary to fill the gap left by declining religious and moral codes which once guided people’s behaviour.
He said: “It is a response to a real problem.
“At its most fundamental level, the problem is that the technical and intellectual capacities of mankind have grown faster than its moral sensibilities or its co-operative instincts. Continue reading