Clause 31
Commons Bill [Lords]
7:00 pm
Jim Knight (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Rural Affairs, Landscape and Biodiversity), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; South Dorset, Labour)
I am grateful for the amendment and to be able to respond to the concerns of the Cumbria commoners and perhaps some of the Cornish commoners.
The amendment is unnecessary, but that is good news because part 2 is already sufficiently flexible to enable a commons association to do what hon. Members are asking for. It can respond to the different conditions found on each common that it manages. For example, its functions relating to the management of agricultural activities do not have to be exercised in exactly the same way in relation to each common. That will depend on the needs of each individual common. The national authority could, in the establishment order, confer different functions in respect of different commons within the same association, but we would probably prefer to give commons associations wider functions and allow the association itself to pick and choose those most suited to it at any one time.
As commons associations are empowered to do anything that will assist them in carrying out their functions, they could, for example, vary the livestock management regimes for each common or make different rules for different commons to respond to local conditions. They could also set up different voting regimes for different commons within the association to avoid the need for everyone having to vote on issues unrelated to their specific common.
In response to the last question asked by the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Rogerson), I suspect that if there was worry about a small common being subsumed by a larger one in an association, different rules would be set up for their management.