Commons Bill [Lords]

Government amendments Nos. 92 to 94 revisit the provision in paragraph (3) to schedule 1 about the permanent severance of rights of common. My starting point is that most grazing rights would never have been severable were it not for the unintended effect of registration under the Commons Registration Act 1965. Clause 9 reinstates the general prohibition on severance. Schedule 1 gives effect to some exceptions. On Third Reading in another place, we responded to calls from Lord Inglewood and others to introduce a power for the national authority to enable permanent severance on a designated common by order. In moving an amendment, my noble friend Lord Bach said that the powers were ““a reserve power only””. He added that that did not mean that we intended to use them, and said that there were no plans to do so. However, in Committee, the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) and the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (David Maclean), when they were agreeing with each other, sought to temper the requirement that the owner of a common must consent to any individual act of severance. We accept the argument advanced in Committee that an owner might exercise a veto for the wrong reasons—for example, to secure a financial inducement—and the amendment enables us to provide in the order that consents must not be unreasonably withheld. I move on to amendment No. 115. This has been an extremely good-natured debate. I trust that I will be forgiven if I savour this moment and this amendment and what is going on over on the Opposition Benches. As of this morning, I have had two separate speeches ready for the amendment: one to accept it and one to reject it. I left Opposition Members to struggle out the issue between themselves, to see who could vie most for my attention. The amendment tabled by the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border would go rather further than the Government amendment. It would give the national authority discretion about whether to include a requirement for the owner’s consent in any particular order. I have listened with care to the arguments advanced by the right hon. Gentleman. He represents the interests of his constituents with great tenacity. He has written to me twice on these matters. The way in which he has presented his case, both in correspondence and orally today, does him great credit. The right hon. Gentleman has made the trenchant point that severance of common rights in the hills of Cumbria is not a recent innovation. As is often the case in those parts, the rights have always been qualified. The law has always recognised that those rights may be severed. Were we to contemplate an order to permit continued severance in such areas, we would certainly want to have a discretion not to require the consent of the owner. That discretion is not available to us as the Bill stands. We remain of the view that there should be a general prohibition on severance. Indeed, the right hon. Gentleman has accepted that we are talking of exceptional circumstances. Should we be minded to make an order under paragraph (3) permitting severance in any locality, we should have a power to impose a condition requiring the consent of the owner to any particular act of severance. That will ensure that severance does not interfere with the proper management of common where the owner continues to take an active interest. We believe that the Government’s amendments to paragraph (3) remain sensible and confer greater flexibility, but I am inclined to agree to the amendment of the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border.