Commons Bill [HL]

I asked a question that the noble Baroness has not answered, but I am very happy to await a reply by letter. When she mentioned commons associations buying land, I was not sure whether she meant that in the layman’s sense or in the lawyer’s sense, because real property includes rights. One of the provisions that the Government are introducing, as the noble Baroness knows, is the power for the commons association to have severed rights as an alternative to selling them to Natural England or selling them to the owner of the soil of a common who will then absorb them so that they become surplus rights. The noble Baroness said that it was not intended that there would be much land transaction. I want to be clear that when she used the word ““land””, she was using it in the layman’s sense and that it was not a suggestion that, while there will be a right to acquire severed rights which have been granted to commons associations under the Bill, it would not really be used—and that it is anticipated that it might happen occasionally, as appropriate, as a matter of course.