MPs’ offices get stacks and stacks of mail. Every day all manner of things arrive, from invitations, to big glossy brochures from various organisations, to letters from constituents, to replies from letters written to various Government bodies on behalf of local residents, to thank you cards when problems have been resolved.

Today, Lynne Featherstone’s constituency office received a special surprise in the post. Ben and Jerry’s, in conjunction with Stonewall, had produced a specially designed ice cream tub, complete with the Equality Minister’s photograph and the title Lynne Honeycomb, to show the company’s support for Equal Marriage. Sadly for her office staff, it didn’t actually contain any ice cream, though.

Ben and Jerry’s website has a section devoted to Equal Marriage with a link to the Home Office’s consultation on the issue and describes their joint work with Stonewall to raise awareness of the importance of marriage quality. They’ve even renamed their Apple Pie flavour Appley Ever After for the time being.

If you haven’t yet responded to the Government’s consultation, you have until 14th June to do so – don’t leave it till the last minute like I did for the Scottish equivalent.

In other equal marriage related news, the Equality Network in Scotland is encouraging Scots to write to their MSPs in support of Equal Marriage in the month before the SNP Government decides how it will respond to the Scottish consultation. Interestingly, this attracted over 60,000 responses, almost three times the amount garnered by the SNP’s consultation on the independence referendum which attracted 21,000. You may be interested to know that the SNP itself has more than 20,000 members.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social