I think that it is fair to say that the Churches are not displaying tremendous enthusiasm for this proposal. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that it is not easy for the official Opposition to carry out extensive consultations, but the issue was raised in Committee, when we took evidence from some of the Churches, and I detected no great appetite or enthusiasm from them for further discussion of this kind of proposal.
Of course, we would like the Government to adopt this proposal and take it forward wholeheartedly and in a way that delivers a robust and settled legal right to humanist weddings. In the absence of that, we simply need to take the evidence of the number of people who are coming forward asking for a humanist ceremony, the number of humanist ceremonies that are taking place and the very high popularity they enjoy both among those who participate in them and those who attend them.
Let me read the remarks of one couple:
“A humanist wedding offered us the chance to make the wedding ‘ours’, it enabled us to construct our own vows and create a ceremony that felt immediately very personal to both us and our guests, it also portrayed exactly what marriage meant to us and how we see our marriage growing in the future.”
We should be celebrating that in the context of this Bill, and I greatly regret that a sense of celebration is being lost as a result of the way that this afternoon’s debate is proceeding.