Clause15
Commons Bill [Lords]
12:00 pm
Philip Dunne (Ludlow, Conservative)
Thank you, Miss Begg, for calling me. I should like to endorse the comments of other Committee members: it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.
I support the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire. I remind the Committee of my declaration of interests, which I identified on Second Reading, in relation to some grazing rights and modest ownership rights in common land.
I should like to draw the Minister’s attention to two areas of conflict, which may arise if we do not take into account the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend. One relates to the Highways Act 1980 provisions that I referred to on Second Reading, which provide protections for landowners to give rights of way over their property, although those are not permanently enshrined. Section 31 of that Act allows a landowner to give notice that it is not his or her intention that land should become permanently dedicated as a right of way.
A similar provision ought to apply to a green to which a landowner gives permissive access. The two approaches will be inconsistent if the Bill is more prescriptive than the 1980 Act. The Minister might argue that we should change the 1980 Act. That will be for him to say, but I do not favour it.
Part of my concern arises from the length of time involved and the retrospective nature of the proposals. On Second Reading, I raised an example from my constituency in which some Glebe land owned by the Church had been used for pastimes such as leisure pursuits and dog-walking for much longer than 20 years. If the landowner does not wish their land to be registered, it will in effect be confiscated as a result of the provisions unless we pass the amendments, and I am not sure that it is the Bill’s intention to disfranchise that kind of owner in such circumstances.
A related point concerns Human Rights Act 1998 implications. A particular case was brought to my attention by one of my constituents. The Bill, if not amended, could fall foul for not being compatible with the Human Rights Act, particularly article 1, protocol 1 on the protection of property. The disproportionate limitation of property rights has no viable means of protecting the right to freely enjoy possession. The case that my constituent highlighted was JA Pye (Oxford) Ltd v. United Kingdom 2005. I can give the Minister the reference number if he needs to look it up. I should be interested to know whether he has considered the Bill’s Human Rights Act implications for landowners. He might like to comment on that before the question is put.