Commons Bill [HL]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister and his department on the amount of preparatory work done on the Bill. It has been in gestation for a long time. It was being actively discussed 10 years ago, and we kept on asking when it would be introduced. The Bill includes many important points, but, as the Minister will be aware from the variety of speeches today, there are concerns. It is interesting to quote from the Inclosure Act 1845, which said that it was:"““An Act to facilitate the Inclosure and Improvement of Commons and Lands held in common, the Exchange of Lands, and the Division of intermixed Lands; to provide Remedies for defective or incomplete Executions, and for the Non-execution of the Powers of general and local Inclosure Acts; and to provide for the Revival of such Powers in certain Cases””." That was more than 150 years ago, but, interestingly, some of those points still apply today. I happen to be the only Member of this House from Wales to have spoken on the Bill today. I have been working hard as a steward at the Royal Welsh Show, so it has been difficult to find the time to work on the Bill, but I have discussed it with a panoply of people at the show. I have some quotations on what people think about the legislation:"““It is a very familiar issue to me””," and:"““There is no woman or man who lives more than about 10 miles from a common in Wales. It is a very, very familiar sight””." Many of us would have preferred to have a commons Bill for Wales. There is a tradition of free access to commons in Wales. The right to roam in harmony with commoners and landowners has existed for not only decades but centuries. A third of Breconshire, where I come from, is common land. No county in England or Wales has a higher proportion of common land. Many small farms depend on sheep grazing for their economic viability. Amazing things have happened to our common land in the past 70 years or so. When I was a primary school child during the Second World War, the War Agricultural Executive Committee ploughed an entire common upland at 1,000 feet. Italian prisoners of war grew potatoes throughout the common, in rows a mile long, followed by wheat. After the war, all the land went back to grass—it was S23 ryegrass, bred in Aberystwyth. Common land is part of a working environment. The   Bill, when enacted, will be warmly welcomed if it provides a secure balance between the rights of graziers and landowners and the need to respect the environment. In Committee it will be difficult to achieve the balance that probably we all seek. One of the functions of the Bill is the protection and promotion of sustainable agriculture. Many noble Lords have asked what that statement means. There must be a balance between securing economic sustainability, so that people in the countryside do not become a rare breed in their own environment, and sustaining the natural environment through biodiversity. Frequently, events such as the foot and mouth outbreak have had an impact on the countryside. We on the Brecon Beacons had to slaughter 18,000 ewes during the outbreak, with the result that the stocking rate has decreased considerably. Farmers have told me, and I saw at the Royal Welsh Show, that there is far more grazing on the Brecon Beacons now than there was before the outbreak of foot and mouth disease. The noble Viscount, Lord Ullswater, rightly referred to common agricultural policy reforms and how headage payments have encouraged farmers to keep far too many sheep. The situation is now substantially different because of CAP reform. I agree with noble Lords who said that overgrazing will rapidly become under-grazing, which will create a management problem that must be addressed. Over the past couple of days I have been discussing the registration of rights and the rights of commons associations. It is a difficult issue, given the wide range of common land throughout the United Kingdom. After leaving Wales, I was fortunate enough to work in the Pennines, where the situation was quite foreign to me. I was unfamiliar with the farm maps of the uplands, talk of stints and such matters. Coming from Wales, I was not at all familiar with the system in the north of England. That has been brought out in today’s debate. The Farmers’ Union of Wales is exercised about certain issues, although I am pleased that Defra has made it a stakeholder in its discussions, which has   enabled it to resolve a lot of points. The union was particularly concerned about the role of county councils and unitary authorities in the registration process. That has been ironed out, and, we are glad to say, all the union’s arguments have been accepted. But there are concerns about a situation that arises leading to the fresh registration of rights in common. The union says that the registration of grazing rights,   provided that those claiming the rights can adduce   appropriate evidence, should be a relatively straightforward matter which can be put right. Only those persons who are claiming as owners of the dominant holding, under the process which existed under the Commons Registration Act 1965, will be eligible to apply. There might problems of misallocation and, in some cases, no rights, but they may be able to be re-established. The union is concerned about that. The situation of commoners is very important. It is difficult to achieve equality between the rights of commoners and the rights of owners. However, I believe that the majority voting system in the case of commoners will sort out a number of previous problems. Certainly, I know of instances where commoners on one hill have had severe disagreements among themselves about how something could be resolved and have never managed to achieve it. The flaws in the 1965 Act, which came out of the 1958 royal commission, frankly, should not have occurred. The 1958 royal commission is well worth reading. If noble Lords can get hold of a copy, I would advise it for summer reading. It is brilliantly written by people such as Dudley Stamp, who is probably our most prominent geographer of the past century. Sir   Ivor Jennings wrote other parts of it. It is an easy and most interesting read. We would all become very well informed from the information gathered at that time. We are pleased that county councils and unitary authorities will continue to keep and administer registers. That must be right: it came out in 1965. We are also pleased that severance, as many others have said, has been addressed and, to a certain extent, resolved. That is very important. It is crucial that dominant land is attached to common grazing rights. We as a party will work hard to ensure that all aspects are addressed conscientiously in this Bill, that people’s human rights, in relation to common land, are properly protected, and that the balance between those human rights and the ability to make a living in the countryside are balanced with the important aspects of the environment and wildlife. I believe that that can be achieved with good will and common sense. There is plenty of it in this House. The speeches today give us hope that a good result can be achieved with a lot of hard work in Committee.