As Mike Harding sent the following letter to The Guardian 17 Dec 2002, we could have at least expected him to ask Dr Howells why he was 'hoodwinked' the last time........And to actully push him for the answer, when he asked Howells the same question about sessions, this time.

· England is the only country I can think of that has virtually no respect for its own national culture. Here in Ireland, traditional music and dance in pubs is common and people are fiercely proud of their traditions. In the US, the Smithsonian has a massive archive of traditional music and pretty much every country in Europe has a government-sponsored centre keeping alive its traditional music.

Close to a million listeners tune in to my Radio 2 programme each Wednesday, 60,000 people go to the Sidmouth festival and hundreds of thousands go to Cambridge and the many other folk festivals about the country.

If this bill goes through, then music-making in our pubs will pretty much disappear, except for the juke box and kareoke machine: folk, Christmas carols, mummers plays, Morris dancing - all of them will become subject to control and licensing.

Kim Howells, the minister concerned, promised me on my programme that people making music in traditional sessions and folk clubs would not be penalised. It now looks as though I was hoodwinked. Why is this government so concerned with controlling every aspect of our lives? Why is a Labour government trying to kill the music of the people?

If this bill had been current 30 years ago, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Rod Stewart, Mark Knopfler, Donovan, Ewan McColl, Bob Dylan, Gerry Rafferty, Billy Connolly, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell and the writers Willy Russell and Brian Jacques might all have had different careers, since all of them at some time served their dues in England's folk clubs.

This bill is an infringement of our rights as human beings to make music for the sheer joy of it - the very thing that fuelled so much of the early left in this country - and New Labour should hang its head in shame.
Mike Harding