Housing and Regeneration Bill

I rise with my conscience on my sleeve. I played no role whatever in the Commons Bill and I am therefore extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer. I drove through that village the other day, having gone modestly out of my way out of sheer curiosity about the noble Baroness’s hinterland. I am grateful to them for their vigilance, not least in this instance. Perhaps I may explain why. The Wiltshire Record Society publishes an annual volume about something of a statistical or historical nature that has occurred in Wiltshire at any time in the past 1,000 years. In 1982, its volume was devoted to the judicial notebook of the magistrate of the hundred, which our village in Wiltshire was, for the years 1744-49. Either the magistrate or his clerk had kept a manuscript note of every one of those cases. Five hundred cases came in front of him during those five years, at the time when the war of the Austrian secession was going on. They were taking about 100 cases a year or a couple of cases a week. The society has 300 subscribers, including four Japanese universities, and prints an edition of 150 volumes which can be bought by the general public on an ad hoc basis. My favourite general knowledge question to people in the village is: what was the most frequent crime in our hundred between 1744 and 1749? The answer was the theft of firewood. It was patently clear that this was entirely due to the enclosures. I am not saying that that would necessarily be the problem in the 21st century, although there are moments when I wonder. Nevertheless, those who protect these spaces are people to whom we are greatly in debt. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.