Commons Bill [HL]

I start by thanking the noble Baroness for her kind remarks. I preface what I have to say on this amendment by saying that while the principles of this Bill may be fairly simple and straightforward, it is undoubtedly a complex and complicated Bill as it now stands. We do not believe that it is a particularly controversial Bill in any more than one or two aspects. I repeat what I said on Second Reading, which is that we are, of course, still prepared and willing to listen to noble Lords’ ideas about the Bill. We have had the opportunity to meet certain noble Lords who asked to meet us. The results of those conversations will be seen a little later this afternoon. We want this to be a consensual Bill as much as it possibly can be. I invite noble Lords to discuss matters with me outside the Chamber while the Bill is in Committee to see whether there is anything we can do in that regard. The noble Baroness moved Amendment No. 1. The answer to her question is that it is intended that there should be one register for town and village greens and one register for common land. The Commons Registration Act 1965 uses the term ““town or village green”” in the context of providing for the registration of any land which conforms to the description of a town green or a village green. Land could not be both. So the register came to be called a register of town or village greens. Now that most such land has been registered, there is no means by which a town green may be distinguished from its village cousins, so the registers are, indeed, registers of both town and village greens. Even so, the registers may equally correctly be described as containing details of town or village greens as every entry relates to either one or the other, even though we may not know which. In providing for new additions to be made to the register—a matter that we shall deal with in Clause 14—we do not wish to give the impression that land must qualify as both a town and a village green, which it clearly cannot. We take the point of the noble Baroness: we think that the existing formulation in the Bill works better. On that basis, I invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.