Commons Bill [HL]

My Lords, like most other speakers in this afternoon’s debate, I must begin by welcoming the Bill. I apologise to the Minister for having been unable to attend any of the briefings that have been held. I also make a declaration of interest. I am both an owner of common land and of stints on other lands and also the same in the capacity of trustee. My remarks will come from the perspective of the north of England. I dare say that much of what I say will be equally true in Wales and in the south-west. As a number of speakers have already said, the problems of lowland commons are in some respects, and in some respects only, somewhat different. It seems to me that the crucial point about upland commons is that they still operate as part of a wider pastoral agricultural tradition, which we see not only elsewhere in the British Isles—the Minister commented on Scotland and Northern Ireland—but on the Continent too, for example, in the Pyrenees. The crucial point here—and I disagree with what I think the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said but which I am not sure that he meant—is that the common-land system is not in fact an archaic anachronism; rather it is a living form of land tenure, which in itself is part of a useful and productive agricultural system.