Commons Bill [HL]

I rise at last to say something on the Bill. I declare an interest as the owner of one end of a common, with the Bishop of Norwich owning the other end, which is an interesting situation in view of what was previously said about the Church Commissioners. I think he looks after it himself. I am in favour of most of the Bill. In Norfolk we do not have many commons. They are small. Some are enthusiastically used and some have not been touched for 30 years. Quite apart from anything else, they need sorting out. I am quite sure that the registration last time went tolerably well. However, it did not update the record and did not ensure that it was known who the commoners were. This problem will now have to be picked up and it will have to be discovered who the commoners are. That will cost money. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, certainly put it extremely well by asking from which hat the money will come. That is important because of sparsity. My goodness, we do not have many and do not have a dense population anyway. We are mostly arable and are talking about entirely grazing commons.