Commons Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the Minister and to Members of the Committee for their contributions to this debate. It has been very helpful—certainly to me, and I hope it has been to other Members. I want to emphasise two or three points. This is an opportunity. Clearly, there are some anomalous commons all over the country. The principle of local commitment and local decision making is absolutely right. I hope that there will be a re-examination of whether the precise delineation of the commons is the right one for the 21st century. Some of them have ancient history which may not be entirely relevant. In that context, I draw the attention of the Committee back to my amendment. I did not say that we should go for big areas. I said that they should be well-defined areas. They may be relatively small; I can think of some in my part of the country that are well defined—they are relatively small, but they are well defined. Surely that is the criteria to use. In that context, the contributions from a number of Members about the extent to which we need to balance that with local commitment is extremely important. Viability and efficiency will be delivered only if people are committed to the association. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, teased me, in a kindly fashion, for putting both sides of the argument. I am used to doing that; I am a Liberal Democrat—at least we are teased for doing that. Seriously, this was intended as a probing amendment, as the Minister said. At the outset I said that I hoped that it would give the Committee an opportunity to look at these issues. In so doing, I hope we have given an indication to those who will take these important decisions at the local level so that, in future, they will have viable and democratically supported associations. In that respect, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.