Commons Bill [HL]

I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate, which has been slightly longer than I thought it would be. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, that these are probing amendments, and it is important to have had this debate on them. As I said at the beginning, if we do not get it right for the commons associations, they will fail, and all of us here wish them to succeed. Even if we move other amendments that cause alarm bells to ring, the noble Lord should not always assume that we necessarily want to force them through, rather that we seek clarification. I am grateful to the Minister for his very long response. As the proceedings continue, we shall try to shorten our contributions, otherwise we shall be covering the same ground twice. The noble Lord highlighted the six functions in paragraphs (a) to (g) but then said that the list was only illustrative. That made me even more nervous, because it makes me wonder what else will be added, in a flexible way, over the years, to suit commoners. But I shall not go down that road today. We shall come to the clarifying of ““surplus”” later; I have no difficulty with that. Given what other Members of the Committee have said, I, too, assume and hope that the graziers and all who have commoners’ rights will apply for agri-environment schemes. That is the whole purpose of setting them up. The Minister said very clearly that it will be done according to majority voting. I assume that he means more than 50 per cent will be the majority. We discussed this earlier and, unless I am wrong, I have to assume that out of 24 people, 13, say, would be enough to approve the scheme going through. We can return to this at another stage; I am quite happy about it. I thank the Minister and will read very carefully what he has said. At this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.