Commons Bill [HL]

I thank the Minister for introducing Amendment No. 4. By the end of our consideration, he will realise that I get slightly alarmed when I see such open-ended wording as in this amendment. In his explanation, he talked about rights of grazing and the rights of tenants and owners; I have no difficulty with that. In fact, if he would like to take his amendment away and think about it again, I would be much happier, but I shall continue for now. New paragraph (a) proposed in the amendment entitles the Government to,"““require or permit other information””—" other unspecified information, which could be anything; it is not defined in the Bill. Proposed new paragraph (b) talks about ““any information””. It is right and relevant that some things should be included, but the amendment is totally open-ended and could lead to all sorts of other information being required at a later date. There is another matter on which I wish to draw the Committee’s attention on the amendment. Obviously the Minister will be aware of the undesirability of overburdening either registration authorities or commons associations, in terms of costs of administration and total costs. Have the Government given thought to the sort of burden likely to fall on those authorities? What sort of money has been allocated? However, my main concern is that as the amendment stands—that is why I am giving a fairly laboured explanation—I am certainly not happy that it be so open-ended. Were it possible for the Minister to come back on Report with an amendment that included the sorts of thing that he included when he introduced this amendment, I for one would be much happier.