Commons Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for explaining the further depths of the government amendments. We are very interested in the outcome. I would comment that of course one welcomes Amendment No. 22, to leave out subsection (8), which seems unnecessary given the provisions in subsection (4). However, Amendment No. 21 seems to be lacking in one regard. The ““appropriate national authority””, which could be CCW or the Secretary of State, should ““have particular regard”” only to the interests of those mentioned in paragraphs (a) to (c) of subsection (6). Landowners are included only under paragraph (a) as,"““persons having rights in relation to . . . the release land””." Even there, it is the commoners’ rights which are to have particular attention paid to them. There seems to be no special protection for the rights of the landowner on replacement land. Though that is another issue, there seems to be some imbalance here which suggests to us that some will be considered more fairly than others. In the mean time, however, we welcome these amendments as they stand.