Part of Civil Partnership Bill [Lords] – in a Public Bill Committee am 2:45 pm ar 21 Hydref 2004.
It is important that the Bill does that. I am not a Church member. It may well be the case, as my hon. Friend says, that at some time in the future all the churches, dare I say it, may have sorted out their attitudes and would want to go further than the legislation allows. However, there are other people who take a secular view and would want to be reassured that there was a purely secular route for entering a civil partnership or civil marriage. We must recognise that balance, and we have recognised it in the Bill by saying that the legal process of entering a civil partnership should be a secular process. I shall come on to deal with what might happen around that process and, in doing that, address the argument of the hon. Member for Christchurch.