---

Health Bill

I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Howe, on making one of the best speeches on the subject. It was fascinating. Ian McKellen’s ““Richard III”” is the answer to his point on Shakespeare. It was a great film, as everyone knows, set in the 1930s. If the Minister does not mind, I wish to address a point to the noble Earl and to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. I ask the noble Earl how, if these exemptions are granted, they will be policed. Do we return to the days of the Lord Chamberlain? Who decides what is legitimate and what is not? My second question is to the noble Baroness. Theatre is about illusion. That is at the heart of much of what it does. Is this exemption necessary? I was thinking while she was speaking about something that I discovered recently when reading about the famous scene in ““Singin’ in the Rain””: it was not water that was poured on Fred Astaire, but milk, because water did not show up on the screen. It was a dilution of milk and water, which was apparently profoundly unpleasant by the end of filming, as one can imagine, because the studio was very hot. This is a subject on which many of my colleagues have differences. The noble Lord, Lord Monson, may poke fun at differences in this party. I think that we all have some differences on these matters, but I am genuinely seeking to know what the need is for the exemption, and whether the matter cannot be addressed in another way by those in the dramatic professions.