Commons Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 44:"Page 6, line 25, leave out subsection (3)." The noble Baroness said: This is, again, a probing amendment. Page 16 of the Explanatory Notes lists the mechanisms that it is believed would cause, by common law, a right of common to be extinguished. We wonder whether the Government are right to wish the rights of common to continue, even where common land is destroyed—for example, because it is reclaimed by the sea or where its product is exhausted, such as when peat subject to the rights of turbary runs out. We also question what the Government feel should happen to the rights affected by, for example, the creation of a reservoir on land to which common rights are attached. Under common law, they would disappear along with the land, but if the Government decree that common law cannot apply in such circumstances, what will happen to the rights? Surely that is another instance in which the Government’s intentions should appear in the Bill. I beg to move.