Commons Bill [HL]

I thank the Minister for that comprehensive reply. When we reach my own Amendment No. 164A, I shall feel that he has already given me an encouraging response—but perhaps we should wait until that time for a definitive response. Returning to the amendments spoken to by my noble friend Lady Byford, I did not think that there were problems here, but having listened carefully to the Minister, I have a feeling that one or two difficulties could arise out of his answer. I have spent a great deal of the past 30 years trying to balance the grazing rights on commons between shooting interests, conservation interests and farming interests. It is not always an easy task, but by and large I would like to think that I was successful. But there is no getting away from the fact that what I or English Nature, or another individual, may regard as being a correct grazing level may not be the same as that which a farmer would agree to. So if I have spent many years trying to negotiate a sensible grazing outcome on a common and a commons association is then formed, and that common association decides that it wishes to increase the grazing on the common or on certain parts of it, much of the effort that I and, perhaps, English Nature have made will be undermined. This seems to me to be quite wrong. I acknowledge that most commons associations will be formed for the purposes of trying to engage in an agri-environment scheme. If that is the case, clearly English Nature—or Natural England, as it will be by then—will act as the referee. It would not allow a commons association to engage in a scheme in the first place if there was not going to be a sensible level of grazing. But in the absence of an agri-environment scheme, which is not a compulsory part of the formation of a commons association, if that association decided that it wished to up the grazing it could have a detrimental effect on a common’s nature conservation value or, indeed, on its value to the owner of a grouse shoot, where heather is clearly important. If the heather was to be debilitated by increased grazing, such interests would begin to suffer. From what the Minister said, I have a feeling that we may have some difficulties, which my noble friend Lady Byford has quite rightly raised.