Commons Bill [HL]

I hope that my noble friend will forgive me if I do not return to the arguments that we had in the useful debate on the previous group. I heard very clearly his views on Clause 26 as presently drafted—without committing myself to anything other than looking closely at it again. I agree with the comments of the noble Earl, Lord Peel, on Amendment No. 130. I know that this is a probing amendment. However, we believe that there are many reasons why a holder of common rights may not be exercising them at any point in time. For example, the rights holder may not be involved in agricultural activity, or may have determined that economic conditions no longer justified the exercise of the rights. Equally, the inactivity of rights might be of a more temporary or short-term nature. The rights holder may have signed up to an agri-environment agreement which effectively prevents him or her using the rights for a period. He may have recently purchased a dominant tenement and not decided how to use the rights; or he may not have restocked after suffering the impact of disease. In short, there are many reasons why a rights holder might be inactive in the short or long term. However, he would still be caught by the noble Baroness’s amendment. We would not want to prevent such persons being involved or having their voices heard in the establishment of a commons association. That is particularly important for those whose inactivity is of only a short-term nature and who plan to activate the use of their common rights when the conditions are favourable. There is also a problem in deciding who is and who is not an active commoner. A nice point of decision, for example, would be whether grazing one ewe for one day of the year constituted an active exercise of rights, or whether it should be some greater proportion of rights for a specific part of the year, and whether it should be the same for each common or different. It would be very difficult to decide when a person was ““exercising”” their rights of common. We are aware of concerns of some commoners and owners, particularly on commons where there are large numbers of inactive rights holders, that their concerns may be overpowered by the large number of inactive graziers. We do not think this will be the case as commons associations may be given only a limited range of functions, related to the management of common rights, vegetation and agricultural activity. If active graziers on a common were not prepared to support an association, there is little it could do, and it is extremely unlikely that an association would be formed on an agriculturally active common without the support of the active graziers. So in this instance we do not think that the proposed change is required.