Commons Bill [HL]

Amendment No. 116 is grouped with Amendment No. 78. The noble Lord, Lord Livsey, has properly classified this as the ““land registry”” group. Our amendment relates to Schedule 2, paragraph 7, which deals with ownership. Some of our questions may be answered by the Minister’s reply to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, but I shall go through the problems that we have in mind. It is a probing amendment. Can the Minister explain to the Committee how the process whereby the commons registration authority has to be notified by the Chief Land Registrar that the land has been registered in the register of title will work? How will the Chief Land Registrar know that ownership of a parcel of land is registered with a commons registration authority. Will the commons registration authorities be expected to provide lists of ownership to the Chief Land Registrar? What is the timescale within which the Chief Land Registrar has to act, and how long do the commons registration authorities then have to remove registrations? Will this removal come within the transitional period? How much work will be involved? Will there be any need to advertise the procedure? Is there any intention to computerise all the records and then compare databases? If so, how will the two parties deal with the records that do not match?