If I was a minister and someone drafted me as ill-thought out letter as that, I'd want them replaced. No competent civil servant could ever ask his minister to sign a direct falsehood, and he does here. So in the letter poor old Howells puts his name to the bald and unambiguous assertion: "We do not currently intend to provide for the licensing...of any public entertainment which is not already covered in the existing public entertainment licensing laws."

But in fact the intention is that the bill will completely remove the two-in-a-bar exemption, rather than extending it, which means that a lot of public entertainment that is not currently required to have a licence will have to have one.

In other words a howelling falsehood.