Richard Bacon and his own degree of separation
WHEN Tory MP Richard Bacon launched his campaign for ‘no fault’ divorce, he already had a vested interest in the subject.
For the 55-year-old former investment banker is being divorced by his wife, Victoria, 45, who tells me she’s cited his unreasonable behaviour in their court papers.
She regrets ‘that Richard has put our personal situation in the public domain by seeking now to change the law’.
The couple married in 2006 after Bacon proposed to former BBC news producer Victoria Panton at a pig farm.
However, they suffered tragedy the following year when her mother was killed in a bus accident that left two other members of her family seriously injured.
‘Shortly after losing my mother, I moved to live in Richard’s Norfolk constituency, which resulted in us spending long periods apart,’ she says. ‘Distance, grief and the pressure of his work eventually overwhelmed us, so much so we agreed to separate.’ Victoria adds that she ‘fully supports’ Bacon’s campaign ‘in order to minimise the distress to others, in a similar situation, that an already painful situation causes’.