Clause8
Commons Bill [Lords]
11:00 am
James Paice (Shadow Minister (Agriculture & Rural Affairs), Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; South East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)
I will let the Minister catch up with himself. Hewas making excellentprogress.
The issuethat I wanted to address during the debate on clause 8—it alsoimpinges on clause 9, but I shall not raise it again—is what hassometimes been called local severance, which is linked to the questionof apportionment in clause 8. Paragraph 50 of the explanatory notescontains an example of a common that is subject to rights to graze 100 sheep and that is divided equallybetween two farms A and B. The notessuggest:
“Theowner of Farm A dies and the farm is divided equally between thatowner’s two children. Two new dominant tenements A1 andA2”
will each have theright to graze 25 sheep. It goes on tosay:
“Farm B issold to a developer who in turn sells it off in 50 plots, each with ahouse built on it.”
Underthe rules and regulations, the owners of each of those houses
“will be able to show that theyoccupy 1/50th part of the area of the historic dominanttenement B, and (applying the rules of pro rata apportionment)therefore each has attached to it 1/50th of the rightsrecorded as attached to historic dominant tenementB”—
namely, onesheep.
That sort ofthing undermines the integrity of the commons and the credibility ofthe system. As I understand it, that is what must happen under the Billas it is drafted. There is no alternative, as somebody once said. Theexample prompts some detailed questions. Obviously, not all thosehouses will occupy exactly one fiftieth of the original area. We mightget into serious fractions of sheep, because some houses occupyslightly more square metres than others, but I set that pointaside.
Although such asituation could happen in many different scenarios, I raise an ideasimply to get the Minister’s response: there should be a systemwhereby the developer who bought plot B ought to be able under certaincircumstances to sever the rights from all the modern houses and giveor sell them back to the association, or make them available for otherrights owners to acquire. That would keep those rights in the hands ofpeople who seriously want them rather than in the hands of those peoplewho buy houses and end up with the right to one sheep.
I accept that, in somecircumstances, development might mean that house owners would end upwith a number of rights that would have a value. I am not suggestingthat anything should be compulsory, but the developer should have anopportunity to sever the rights. As long as the rights remain on thecommon and must go to a rights holder with a dominant tenement of thecommon, all the principles that the Bill is trying toespouse—principles with cross-Committee and cross-Housesupport—will be retained without leading to the somewhatludicrous and extreme outlined in the explanatory notes, whichnevertheless can and, indeed, does happen. I raise this matter to get aresponse from the Minister at this stage, because it requires furtherinvestigation.