Commons Bill [HL]

had given notice of his intention to move, as an amendment to Amendment No. 37, Amendment No. 38:"Line 2, leave out ““on or after 28th June 2005 but””" The noble Lord said: My Lords, I speak to Amendment No. 38, which is in this group and is an amendment to Amendment No. 37. We are on the last group of amendments at the end of what has been a gruelling but absolutely fascinating series of meetings of various sorts to discuss this Commons Bill. I think that a lot of us could now pass an examination on the Bill and achieve at least a grade C or even a grade B. We know about all sorts of things that we knew absolutely nothing about before. This has been a fascinating experience and procedure. People say that this is the kind of thing the House of Lords does very well. The House of Lords does lots of things very well but we can be very proud of the work that we have done on the Bill, particularly in Grand Committee—I refer collectively to the Government and the rest of us. It is a much better Bill now than when it started. A huge amount of credit for that should go to the two Ministers who have been involved and their backing team of civil servants—the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, who approached the Bill in a spirit which allowed Members on all sides of the Committee to contribute. The Bill is much better for that. Having said that, it is slightly unfortunate that we end on a note of disagreement and of considerable disappointment at the amendments that the Government are now putting forward. These are new issues and therefore it is not unreasonable to spend a few minutes on them. The Minister said that he did not think it was reasonable to extend the new powers which everybody will have to initiate proceedings in the county court under Section 194 of the relevant Act to remedy encroachment, obstruction and so forth on commons. He did not say why he did not think that was reasonable; he just made that statement. I believe that this issue will be raised in the House of Commons when the Bill goes there and that there will be further discussion on it. The Bill very substantially extends the range of people who can initiate action against encroachment on and obstruction of commons; it extends it to anybody at all. So we have the position that applies, for example, on rights of way under the Highways Act whereby any of us can go to the county court and ask it to seek the removal of obstructions even if the local authority and anyone else who might have an interest does not do that. If I remember rightly, that great improvement was introduced in the CROW Bill when it passed through this House. It is certainly a very valuable measure. The measure that I am discussing introduces a similar power in relation to encroachment on commons. That is very welcome. However, the Government are now restricting that power to encroachments which took place on or after 28 June 2005. However, it does not matter when the incident took place, an encroachment is an encroachment, and it is an encroachment now. It is not just the fact that someone put up a fence, built a ditch, erected a shed, created a car park or whatever, perhaps six or seven years ago; that encroachment is an ongoing problem for people today. If the power to remove that encroachment within the past 12 years is still available to the local authority, why should it not also be available to anyone else under this power? It is not clear why that restriction should be put in, and the Government will have to explain that further as the Bill goes through. For the moment, I have tabled this amendment, and I hope that the Government will think again. I recognise that they are not going to do so today, and on that basis I stand merely to put forward the case. Finally, since this is the last time that I shall speak on the Bill, I wish it a good passage through the House of Commons. They will find it in a better condition than some of the Bills are in when they start at that end.