Roger Williams (Shadow Minister (Rural Affairs), Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Brecon & Radnorshire, Liberal Democrat)

I rise to make the same point that I made on clause 26, which concerns the establishment of a statutory commons association. The point I made then was about who has the power to initiate or make such an application. I believe that the Minister replied not to that point, but to a point that he wanted to make. The issue is about who can make an application for variation or revocation of establishment orders, because somebody could make a malicious or vexatious application to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to Natural England or to the National Assembly for Wales. Unless there is a limit on people who canmake applications, then commons associations and commoners could have a huge amount of work imposed on them, as could the Minister’s own Department, so the Bill should say who can apply for establishment orders and who can apply for revocation.

Jim Knight (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Rural Affairs, Landscape and Biodiversity), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; South Dorset, Labour)

As I have sought to articulate at all stages of the Committee, we see establishment as a bottom-up process. On variation and revocation, the powers set out in clause 37 allow the national authority effectively to wind up a commons association in three situations. We do not want to set out a formal procedure; we expect Natural England, or the Countryside Council for Wales, to draw matters to our attention—as the champions for commons—when they think that there are problems, but we do not want to give them formal statutory powers. If they think that there are considerable problems in the way that an association is fulfilling its duties or exercising its powers as set out in the Bill, we would expect them to inform the relevant national authority, and if that authority decided that it needed to take action, it would be able to do so under the clause. We need to retain the flexibility that we have currently, however.