I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris) for giving me the opportunity to make this short intervention.

I have a great deal of sympathy with the plight of Mr. Castellain. I am a practising solicitor, and my firm is representing a person with a problem similar to that of Mr. Castellain. He has a house and garden that has been registered as common land, although it was never the intention of the Commons Registration Act to register houses as common land. This house is well over a century old, and has always been occupied by families, and the public have never had access to it, except with the consent of the owners. It is on a large moor in Northumberland, large sections of which are registered as common land. For some reason, the house and its small garden were included in a registration of many acres of land.

My client is unable to have the register rectified because the land was originally registered by mistake. If it had been registered as a fraud, action would be open to him, but there is no reason to suggest that the original application was made for fraudulent reasons. It was done purely by mistake. It is indeed difficult for the owner of a property in these circumstances to sell it, for the simple reason that no building society, knowing the facts, will lend on it. That is an injustice and only this House can rectify it.