Commons Bill [HL]

It comes back to the question of enforcement. It cannot be a duty or expectation that commoners or owners will enforce the law. That is not what they are there to do. In the example of the rave with 1,500 people on the common, it is simply not realistic to think that a statutory commons association could deal with such an invasion. That must be a matter for the police, who have powers to deal with such events. I remind the Committee that anyone can prosecute for offences regarding vehicles on common land because prima facie a criminal offence has been committed. The statutory commons association could do so under existing law; it does not need new rules to do that. If the owner holds an event on the common that interferes with rights of common, the statutory commons association may be able to take action to stop it through the courts—through the civil courts, if need by, by way of injunction, to ensure that it does not happen again, or perhaps through other remedies. We are not persuaded that it would be right to give powers to the commons associations beyond those which already exist in the criminal law. We have dealt with the issue for the moment but we may return to it. I turn to the second part of Amendment No. 161, to which the noble Lord spoke. There is no need for a particular power, but in principle we do not object to what he suggested. We believe that it can be achieved under Clause 31, which concerns ancillary powers, as I said earlier when I spoke to amendments moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller. I almost forgot about government Amendment No. 157. This amendment removes a reference to managing vegetation from the illustrative list of functions in subsection (3). Managing vegetation was included in that list to illustrate that an association could manage the vegetation on a common other than by grazing, albeit within the constraints of other statutory requirements. The reference to management of vegetation is no longer required due to changes introduced by Amendment No. 142, which makes it clear that an establishment order may confer functions relating to the management of vegetation. As we have already discussed, the main effect of this change is to enable associations to be established on commons when no agricultural activity is taking place.