I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that intervention. I am well aware of the numbers issue and, for obvious reasons, I would certainly not want to see a Division in which fewer than 35 Members participated. If my right hon. Friend chooses to withdraw his amendment, I shall not shout—or even mutter—against that. I shall certainly support him if he does that. I simply support the underlying principle of his amendment.
I disagree to an extent with my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) on the cost. Of course, there will be some cost, but a referendum could be held on an ordinary council election day—it would not need to be a special election day—on the first Thursday in May, so I think the cost is broadly affordable. One should always be willing to put one’s own view to the test of the view of the British people—the electorate—and have confidence that they will come to the correct decision.
There is an extraordinary trend of radicalism in being on the side of the secularists, and I am not entirely sure that I support the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend
the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), which is a very rare event, because he is one of the wisest Members of this House and almost invariably right. However, I feel that “shall” does not go far enough and goes too far at the same time. I would be in favour of a Bill saying that every sitting of every council should start with an extraordinary form mass—the Tridentine mass—as that would be absolutely splendid. Ideally, it would be a high mass with so much incense that people started sneezing. It would be a fine piece of legislation, but it is not what the Bill is trying to do; it is simply to enable people to pray if they want to. The word “shall” would take this Bill too far, but if one were introduced in the next set of private Members’ Bills to re-establish Roman Catholic worship at the beginning of all such sessions in our public life, I would certainly not oppose it.