Commons Bill [Lords]

I suspect that I have been struck off the English Nature cocktail party list for the foreseeable future. I will use the short speech rather than the long speech that I have with me today. It was drafted for me by the Federation of Cumbria Commoners, and I make no apology for that; it will be one of the better speeches that I have made on the Bill, if I stick to the script. First I pay tribute to the Minister, and particularly to his civil servants, who have been assiduous in paying attention to and trying to balance the different views of commoners but paying attention to what the Federation of Cumbrian Commoners had to say. They visited the area at least twice to obtain indepth knowledge of how the commons are run. I know it is a common view among farmers that no one in the Rural Payments Agency or the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has ever seen a cow or a sheep, but those I have talked to in Cumbria are very appreciative of the state of knowledge of the DEFRA civil servants who have been dealing with the Bill. They should be promoted to the bananas directorate, which I understand involves a nice bit of foreign travel. They cannot go to the Wine Standards Board; that is another good number, but the Department is giving it away to the Food Standards Agency. Amendment No. 115 is an important little amendment. It is not just a technical one, and it is not an amendment in the style of my late right hon. Friend Eric Forth MP, who would have always moved amendments of this nature. The federation says that it is strongly in favour of this amendment because it ensures that there is flexibility as to whether or not owners’ consent will be required if an order is issued allowing local severance. This is a compromise on my part. In Committee I strongly took the view that this part of the clause should be deleted, that there should be no circumstances where the Government should have this power, and that owners' consent should never, ever be required. I now accept that this is a sensible compromise that does not tie the Minister’s hands either way. The Cumbrian commoners accept that there is differing practice across the country and the Bill deals with that through not making severance indiscriminately available. Their concern is to make sure that an order works if and when it is made. Without the amendment, there is a risk that it will not. As the Bill stands, an order allowing local severance is of little value, because it requires the owner of the soil of the common to consent to the transfer and it will rarely be in the owner’s interest to give that consent. In Cumbria, severance has been commonplace for many decades without owner’s consent. My amendment will ensure that if an order is made allowing severance on a local basis, the national authority will not have to require the owner’s consent. It may or may not decide to do so, depending on the particular situation and having regard to any representations made to it. The relationship between the owner of the soil and the owner of common rights is not the same as that captured in landlord and tenant legislation. They both have freehold interests. Having one person restricting the property rights of another is quite different from the state licensing the exercise of property rights—for example, through planning laws. It may even be a breach of human rights legislation to give one person the right to interfere with the rights of ownership of another. The Government have tabled an amendment that would deem that consent has been given if it is considered to have been unreasonably withheld by the owner. That is not adequate by itself. In many cases, the cost of fighting an owner’s veto will exceed the value of the transaction to the commoner. From the perspective of the Cumbrian commoners, the absolute requirement for consent in effect turns the clock back to a feudal era. It is inappropriate for the 21st century.