I NOTE that David Crausby, the Labour candidate for Bolton North East, was one of the 14 Labour MPs in the last Parliament to vote against equal marriage rights for gay people. At the time he wrote to me saying he felt he had to "vote with (his) conscience" and that equal marriage rights were controversial.

I'd like to know, now that equal marriage rights have proven to be entirely uncontroversial and in fact have done a great deal to improve equality in Britain, whether Mr Crausby will recant his "conscience" statement. Will he now agree, as I do, that the Conservatives were entirely right to introduce equal rights for gay people?

Zoë Kirk-Robinson,

Eldon Street,

Bolton