Commons Bill [HL]

I am sure that that last comment is absolutely right, as a passionate supporter of devolution and more. However, I am not sure what the Minister’s answers to some of my questions were. He said that the involvement of Natural England would be targeted by geographical and local preference. I understand what local preference is—if people come along and want to set up a commons association, they will go to the top of the list. Is that what he meant? Will it be done to a large degree on that basis—that those who come first will be first served, or will the Government and Natural England say, ““Actually, there are other priorities and you’ll have to wait””? That might impact on the question of large and small commons, as the small ones may well be pushed to one side while the large ones are dealt with. I do not understand about targeting by geographical preference, however. Who will make the geographical decisions? Will someone at the centre—the Government or Natural England—say that commons in the south-west are to be targeted preferentially over commons in the north-east, or that commons in national parks are to be targeted, or upland commons as opposed to lowland commons, big ones as opposed to small ones or whatever it is? Is that what ““geographical”” means? Those are important questions that we want to understand. The Minister may not be able to give us thorough answers today, and might want to think about it, write to us and tell us what it means. I assume that choices will have to be made if the number of potential commons associations coming forward is larger than the capacity of the administration and bureaucracy to deal with them over a period. There may well be a queue according to the resources available. I come back again to the Minister’s comment about possibly funding the setting-up of commons associations. If the Government are to fund some of them, they will have to make choices. If those choices are not just first come, first served from local preference, how will the Government make them? The questions are fairly important and we want some answers to them. I am talking about England. What will Natural England actually do once the Bill is on the statute book and this part of it comes into operation? What will it do to publicise, advise, set up training, build capacity and all the things that have to happen nowadays to encourage people? Will it not do those things? Will it just sit there and wait for people to know what has happened? Surely not. There will have to be leaflets, events, conferences, seminars and goodness knows what else. If that happens, advice will have to be given. What will that advice be?