Clause6
Commons Bill [Lords]
11:00 am
Roger Williams (Shadow Minister (Rural Affairs), Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Brecon and Radnorshire, Liberal Democrat)
Although we welcome the clause, subsection (6)gives a duty to a local authority to make a judgment and that judgmentwill be about whether it is possible to exercise or sustain theexercise of that rightor
“if the land isalready registered as common land, any other rights of commonregistered as exercisable over theland.”
We are worriedabout how the commons registration authority will reach a conclusion onthe matter. Whether a common is appropriately grazed, over-grazed orunder-grazed is often a contentious issue, and there will be as manydifferent opinions as there are people. I know that the Bill sets outlater that an appropriate national authority may appoint people tocarry out the exercise on behalf of the commons registration authority.However, we are concerned about the loss of the commons commissionersas set out in the debate on SecondReading.
In the otherplace, amendments were tabled on inspectors and other ways ofaddressing such issues, but we want to flag matters up at this stagebecause it is an onerous burden for local authority officers, electedmembers, ad hoc tribunals or whatever to have to make such judgments.We want to put in place a much more appropriate system for making thesedecisions.