Commons Bill [HL]

My Lords, I accept that. I thank the Minister for the excellent, detailed and informative letters that we have received since Grand Committee. It would be very helpful if the Minister could write before Third Reading because we might want to put down the odd teasing amendment. As yet, I do not know—I do not know whether anyone knows—when Third Reading will be. When I moved the amendment, I referred to the official record which shows that we did not discuss SSSIs very much in Grand Committee. I had intended to thank, because no one has, whoever—I gather that it was the Clerks—was responsible for this excellent special edition of Hansard, which includes all the Grand Committee debates on this Bill. It was wonderful. I do not know who was responsible but perhaps my thanks—and, I am sure, those of other Members of the House—will be passed on. I am not sure whether we will keep it on our shelves for the next 40 years until the next commons Bill, but it is has been extremely helpful and useful. I did not have a chance to speak to my noble friend’s amendment. I thought that the Minister’s response was not up to the standard that we have received from Ministers during the passage of this Bill. I thought that it was nonsense. He suggested that commons associations would not have the expertise of statutory consultees: for example, in planning applications parish councils are statutory consultees. Some of them have tremendous expertise and some have none whatever, but they are able, very often, to give their views. The idea that all statutory consultees have equal weighting or that someone cannot be asked for his or her opinion because you do not know what weighting you will give to the reply when you get it, is not very logical. The Minister mentioned the wind turbine. It is inconceivable that the commons association would not be asked for its views. But a wind turbine would need a planning application and the list of statutory consultees on planning applications is written down. In many cases, it would not be directly asked for its views. It might decide to give them because a notice was put up on the common for anyone to put in his or her views, but it would not be a statutory consultee and would not necessarily be written to specifically by the planning authority. It may be that my noble friend’s amendment was a bit wide ranging, but it needs to be looked at.