Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s move will heighten tensions at Holyrood, with the Labour and Liberal Democrat partners in the ruling Executive coalition trying to find common ground on the issue.

The Executive is proposing that separation times before a contested divorce should be reduced from the present five years to two years and for uncontested divorces from three years to one year.

But the Scottish Parliament’s justice committee agreed two weeks ago to support an amendment to the Family Law Bill that would reduce the time for contested divorces to three years and for uncontested divorces to 18 months.

The issue could become especially divisive for the coalition because as well as receiving Conservative and Nationalist support, the committee amendment is backed by several Labour MSPs. The Liberal Democrats are holding out for the original proposals. The issue threatens, therefore, to split the coalition in the same way as this week’s row between Labour and the Liberal Democrats over new licensing laws provoked scenes of unprecedented confusion at Holyrood.

Cardinal O’Brien has raised the stakes by publicly congratulating the seven members of the justice committee for making a stand against the Executive’s plans and “their sincere efforts in examining the issues at stake”. The cardinal has also written separately to Brian Adam and Fergus Ewing, two SNP MSPs, for their contributions, although they are not members of the committee.

He said that the two MSPs had attempted “to uphold the importance of marriage in society” and described their stance as courageous. The cardinal claimed that the Executive’s proposals had “quite rightly, caused considerable disquiet and widespread concern across Scotland”.

Labour will view the cardinal’s intervention with alarm as many of its West of Scotland MSPs have large Catholic communities and MSPs from these areas who are against the “quickie” divorce changes could feel justified in voting down the proposals if the Executive parties are unable to reach a deal.

The Liberal Democrats see the issue as one of making it simpler for people caught in unhappy relationships to move on. They will also view it as a significant test of Labour ministers’ ability to control their backbenchers after the licensing law debacle and of Labour’s commitment to the partnership agreement hammered out in 2003 when the divorce plans were first revealed.

Negotiations between the coalition parties on a possible compromise are believed to be taking place but both Jack McConnell, the First Minister, and Nicol Stephen, his Liberal Democrat deputy, will struggle to find a deal while at the same time placating their own backbenchers.

Mr McConnell will be keenly aware that with the coalition operating on a slim majority of five, it will take only two or three Labour MSPs to desert for the divorce proposals to be scuppered.

If this happened, it would fuel Lib Dem MSPs’ anger that Labour was not abiding by the terms of the partnership agreement and Mr Stephen would face calls from his backbenchers that they were not bound to vote for Labour-led issues in the agreement.

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