Commons Bill [HL]

As the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, made plain, his amendment would provide that an application for a deregistration and exchange order could not be considered if the release land were to be used for non-agricultural purposes unless planning permission had been granted and a favourable impact assessment had been made on the agricultural sustainability of the replacement land. At this point, I pray in aid the comments of the noble Duke on the difficulties in that area. The purpose of the deregistration and exchange provisions is to ensure that when a person wants to deregister land and provide replacement land, the replacement land is in fact suitable to be registered in its place. If the Secretary of State or the National Assembly has judged the replacement land to be suitable, we see no reason to be concerned about the use to which the release land is put after it has been deregistered. The release land will, of course, continue to be protected by other mechanisms, such as the planning system. In speaking to the amendment, the noble Lord himself recognised the complexities that exist in terms of current use on land. The release land could be any type of land; it may not be in agricultural use or subject to any rights of common. For example, the release land may have been used for entirely private purposes, such as a garden, and the landowner may wish to regularise the situation by providing alternative land in substitution. I wonder whether the unauthorised developments to which the noble Lord referred might be more readily resolved by the Government’s position. In such circumstances, it would be quite inappropriate to require the test set out in the amendment to be applied to such release land. I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.