My Lords, I thank everybody who put their names to Amendment 9. I have a little confession: the original intention was to discuss it in the context of the part of the Bill dealing with access, because of the idea of tying health and well-being into public legislation. It is clear, as I have already said—and nobody has argued otherwise—that if you are fit and active, you tend to have better health. However, does the amendment fit in its allocated group? Having thought about it, those organising the Bill have got it right. It fits because it ties in with the general thrust of what we are saying.
What are we doing to try to improve life for the whole planet and for ourselves together? I am afraid it sounds rather meaningless when I put it like that. The idea is that it is a whole, so we are taking something on board and relating it to other activities. If one thing is done under this Bill, it should be to ensure that we look at the whole of what we are doing. The amendment sits better in this group because we have to consider people’s health and well-being and the public good when we are putting money in. I hope that, when the Minister replies, he will not totally dismiss the idea that we should have better access to public spaces in order to undertake physical activity. However, that does not fit in with some of the other concerns being raised here about better diet and so on, because it is part of that whole.
3.30 pm
I shall briefly turn my attention to the amendment, which I hope will be spoken to in some depth by my noble friend Lord Greaves, about common land. Common land survives for a variety of historical reasons, primarily because people did not think it was worth partitioning off for economic uses in the past. It survives in some very odd places, such as the tops of hills and—the ones that I am more familiar with—marshland at the bottom of river valleys. Common land fulfils a purpose and allows an access point for diverse types of agriculture. Unless we can get places protected and ensure that they are supported by a new direction of government activity, such as granting graziers rights, we are missing
a trick. I catch a train from Hungerford most mornings. Hungerford has a large developed common; there are little patches of common land going down the Kennet Valley. If it survives and allows the type of agriculture, predominantly grazing, that could not happen without that common land, surely that is worth protecting, not only for agricultural and diversity reasons but for historical ones. Surely we should look at that and do something to protect it.