Commons Bill [HL]

My Lords, as my Amendment No. 39 is grouped with Amendment No. 38, perhaps I may take the opportunity to speak to it now. In Committee I tabled an amendment designed to ensure that Clause 31(3)(b),"““making rules relating to the leasing or licensing of rights of common””," did not result in a commons association impinging on the rights of an owner of a common from leasing or letting his surplus rights. However, the Minister confirmed that the Government’s own amendment dealt with the point and that there was no need for my amendment—and as a result I withdrew it. On reflection, however, there appears to me to be a further anomaly that needs examination, in that there are a number of cases when commons rights, which are not technically rights as they are part of the surplus, have been registered incorrectly as rights of common, either by the owner himself or, more likely, by his tenant. That would have been done during the registration period of the 1965 Act, and I think done more as a belt and braces exercise than for any other reason. However, because those so-called rights appear on the register, albeit incorrectly, they could be subjected to Clause 31(3)(b), which in my opinion would be incorrect. My amendment would prohibit a commons association being able to impinge on the owner’s ability to let or lease such rights either now or in future. I should point out—and it is a crucial point—that such an amendment would not in any way affect the powers of the commons association to limit or impose conditions on the exercise of such rights under Clause 31(4)(a). A typical example would be when a commons association felt it appropriate to improve a reduction in stocking numbers across the common in order to comply with a particular agri-environment scheme, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has just said. So, in other words, this amendment simply seeks to ensure that a commons association would not have the power to interfere with the letting of those surplus rights of common which are owned by the owner of the common and have been incorrectly registered but will be dealt with in the same way as the other rights of surplus which are vested in the owner but were not registered.