Commons Bill [Lords]

I am grateful for that advice and look forward to the Minister making the Government’s position clearer. I am conscious that I have highlighted a whole range of aspects of the Bill that can be strengthened and improved, but I want to reinforce the fact that it is a good piece of legislation that builds on the royal commission’s work, with registration, access, and now biodiversity. There is a view in the countryside that the countryside should never change—that it should be preserved in aspic. That cannot be right. The countryside needs to change to survive. A changing, working countryside is a healthy countryside. I am pleased that the Bill is a piece of revising legislation that will enable change to take place. What is important for the countryside is not that change should take place, but the scope, scale and timetable of that change.