This from Hamish Birchall - For circulation

On Sunday 9 February, during an interview on 'Music Matters' for BBC Radio 3, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell said the Musicians' Union Licensing Bill campaign was a 'campaign of misinformation'. This was, of course, a day before the Joint Committee on Human Rights published its report vindicating MU concerns. The Committee concluded that the 'blanket licensing regime' proposed in the Bill carries a 'significant risk' of infringing people's right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention.

The MU will respond to the Culture Secretary's allegation on this Sunday's edition of BBC R3's Music Matters, starting at 12.15pm (16 Feb).

The growing body of legal opinion in support of the MU analysis of the Bill's implications includes a specialist licensing QC. In additions, the Performer-Lawyer group, which also shares MU concerns, has published a 19-page dissection of the 24-point DCMS document published last month, concluding that much of the DCMS analysis is either inaccurate or misleading. It is available on: www.does4you.co.uk

My own annotated version of the DCMS document on the MU site:
http://www.musiciansunion.org.uk/articles/dcms_issues01.shtml