Clause 37
Commons Bill [Lords]
9:45 am
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.