Commons Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 61E:"Page 25, line 37, at end insert—" ““(   )   The appropriate national authority shall issue guidance to local authorities on the exercise of their powers to take action over unclaimed land.”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, this is another issue to which we have not really got to the bottom yet and there is no satisfactory solution in the Bill. It concerns unclaimed commons—land that has been registered as common land that has not been claimed by any owners. Some of it may be small pieces of land that have effectively been abandoned; others may be commons that are satisfactorily operated as commons, but no one knows who is the owner. There is a whole range of them with different circumstances and not all of them are in crisis. However, there is a significant number of unclaimed commons out of the 2,000 in England, which amount to 4,000 hectares and 500 in Wales, which amount to more than 21,000 hectares where there is a significant problem. We had a long discussion about this in Grand Committee, where I tabled amendments proposing that ownership of unclaimed commons could be transferred to local authorities by various technical means. The Minister was very persuasive in suggesting that that was not the way around the problem and would lead to all sorts of complications—not least a problem with the Human Rights Act 1998. Nevertheless, there is a problem. Many commons are neglected, overgrown and crying out for positive management. In Grand Committee, the Minister suggested that the main answer to that lay in the powers within the Bill to deal with unlawful incursions on commons, unlawful encroachments of the sort that we were discussing a few groups ago. Where the problem is one of unlawful incursion, of damaging development or works on a common, it can indeed be dealt with in that way. In that sense, the Minister was right. But in many cases, the powers under Clause 45 will be insufficient. In replying to the debate in Grand Committee, the Minister said—and this gets to the nub of the problem:"““We believe that the real problem underlying unclaimed land is not that there is no known owner but that the lack of clarity about ownership can give rise to ineffective management. We therefore concluded that the problem could be tackled by enhancing the powers for management of unclaimed land and, in addition to Clause 43 and schemes of management under the Commons Act 1899, to give commons associations established under Part 2 the power to manage unclaimed commons””—[Official Report, 14/11/05; GC 277.]" All that will be extremely helpful, useful and positive, but there will still be commons that are unclaimed, in a mess and that need management that will not be covered by any of those provisions. If the Government will not accept what I propose in Amendment No. 61F, what do they think could be done? How will those commons be tackled? It is not a question of unauthorised encroachment. There are no management schemes under the 1899 Act and there is no commons association. The problem is one of management. It is highly likely that it is a problem of management of the vegetation—it is overgrown with brambles, gorse or bracken. It might have lots of nasty plants growing on it, like ragwort, dock and other injurious weeds of that nature. Indeed, it may be causing a problem in the locality because it is invested with Japanese knotweed or other such unpleasant aliens. What I propose in Amendment No. 61F is that where those conditions apply—where no dissolution is available—the local authority has the power not to take over ownership of the common but to do what the Minister said in Committee ought to happen: to exercise any rights of management of the land. As far as I can see, that is not already in the Bill. Amendment No. 61 E merely gives the appropriate national authority instructions to issue guidance to local authorities on the exercise of their powers to take action over unclaimed land. I know exactly what the Minister will say to me in response, because it is what she said to me in response to guidance on action over unauthorised incursions on common land, so I tell her in advance that I accept what she says about that. If she says it again positively here, I shall be delighted. Some of us will be watching and, if the guidance does not appear in a satisfactory form, we will use the appropriate methods to hound the Government until they provide that guidance. The real question here is, who will manage the vegetation, especially, but also the other aspects of unclaimed commons where there is no owner and where the other available options either do not apply or are inappropriate because there is no unauthorised incursion? I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply to an important question that is so far unanswered. I beg to move.