Mr.
Williams: It is a pleasure to speak to amendments Nos. 101
and 73 in this group. Amendment No. 101 is about how the constitution
should look. I cannot remember the details of the constitution that the
hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy produced on Second Reading, but
I suspect that it did not include as a majority on the commons
association those people who exercise rights on the common. This is a
probing
amendment.
Mr.
Llwyd: If I can enlighten the hon. Gentleman—I am
speaking from memory—I believe that the constitution said that
the membership would be between 10 and 12, of which five or six would
be commoners and the rest would have other interests. If that will be
the number, it will not leave a great deal of room for elected members,
for example, and it will not allow for a sufficient majority in favour
of the
commoners.
Mr.
Williams: I thank the hon. Gentleman for reminding me how
the association would be constituted. Again, those people who actively
manage the common should have a majority on the association, and I know
that hon. Members will also be considering ways in which people can be
elected. For generations, people have contributed to producing commons
that are in good heart and under sound management. I hope that the
amendment will give confidence to such people so that they can continue
that work and so that their vision will drive it forward in the
future. I hope that
amendment No. 73 will appeal to the hon. Member for Sherwood, as it
would require that meetings of commons associations should be held in
public. They might want to transact some business such as financial
matters, particularly financial matters involving members of the
association, in closed
session, but, if the amendment were accepted, the general presumption
would be that the meetings would be held in public, which is best
practice for public bodies transacting their
business. Mr.
Drew: I rise to support amendment No. 73, to which the
hon. Gentleman just referred, and amendment No. 37 and new clause 3,
which are in my name and the names of my hon. Friends the Members for
Sherwood and for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell). We had a debate under the
previous clause as to whether meetings of the associations, now to be
called committees, should be held in public. I was happy that my hon.
Friend the Minister agreed to the draft orders being made available.
There must be clarification on which matters would be discussed in
public. I accept that the caveats will be finance and, as discussed in
the debate in the other place, matters that refer to individuals who
may be taking action against another individual. We would not expect
such matters to be discussed in public, but I hope that they would be
reported on publicly in due
course. 6.15
pm Amendment No.
37 and new clause 3 duplicate each other in a sense, although new
clause 3 is somewhat longer. It sets out what we have in mind—to
give some democratic accountability to the bodies—in two ways.
It provides for elections, which we hope would also include election of
the commoners themselves, to give them legitimacy. We also wish the
bodies to have a local essence, and we feel that that aspect would be
best performed by parish or town councils.
The analogy is that where
parish and town councils have allotments, they would bring forward
representatives of those bodies. We feel that that is a good model,
which can be replicated with commons or village greens. Parish and town
councils would certainly be responsible for village greens, but it is
possible that in terms of commons they do not have a say at present,
and we wish to open this up to give local accountability and local
legitimacy. One hopes that councils would take a strong interest in the
matter. We also hope that local areas would want to take an interest in
tying in such a plan with the environmental assistance that the
Government make available through changes in the common agricultural
policy, and to take some responsibility for it.
Although the amendments are
probing amendments, they are useful in that they lay down in terms of
statutory instruments how we would want the elections to take place.
There are a number of details, but unless such provisions are put in
the Bill or at least debated so that we know exactly what the
Government have in mind, this ad hoc measure will never be teased out.
I hope that the Government will respond. I am sure that my hon. Friends
want to talk in more detail about how they think it might work in
practice.
Mr.
Paice: The amendments, including my amendments Nos. 51 and
65, raise a number of issues. Before I enter into the details, I shall
mention that in this clause we are considering almost a contradiction.
I can understand how it has arisen. In earlier debates the Minister
used the argument for flexibility, which I support in principle, yet
here we are with a standard
constitution that will be subject to the affirmative resolution process
in the House. Obviously, the element of flexibility will therefore be
more than a little bit reduced. I am not arguing against a standard
constitution, but I think that it seriously diminishes the value of
using the flexibility argument against some of the amendments that hon.
Members have put forward and that I am about to
address. We are
talking about a plethora of different scenarios. Huge commons, and many
small commons, each with a voluntary association, will come together
under a large umbrella association following the Minister’s
early edict. He continually refers to them as associations for the sake
of the Bill, but they will operate under a much larger statutory
umbrella body. They could include hundreds of rights holders or half a
dozen; there could be one relevant local authority or half a dozen. We
will inevitably be dealing with a huge variety.
I look forward to seeing the
draft constitution when the Minister provides it for us, but it does
give rise to a question. This is a general point, to which I hope he
will respond. He might leave things open, but does he envisage that the
management of the association should be done by some sort of
board—I cannot use the word “committee” because of
the earlier agreement—a group of officers or something else? I
cannot imagine how it could be possible for a body with 10 or 12
members to represent all the interests in some of the larger
situations. Let us
consider the area in which the constituency of my right hon. Friend the
Member for Penrith and The Border is situated, and the Cumbria
commoners. I do not know how many associations there are in that
overall council, but I suspect there are several. I would be hard
pushed to identify just 10 or 12 individuals to sit on such a body.
Therefore, I am unsure that there will not be a need for a larger top
body, with some sort of board, management group or something else
underneath it. Perhaps the Minister will respond to that particular
point. My amendments are aimed at that top body rather than at whatever
management board there will be where necessary.
I understand that the Minister
wants flexibility, but I have a lot of sympathy with the point raised
in amendment No. 101: the majority involved should be owners of rights
on the common. I want to refer to clause 31, which we shall come to and
which lays down the functions. The functions of an association are
quite limited and are generally agricultural. They relate to the
management of agricultural activities, vegetation and the rights, which
will be largely agricultural although some of them might be
piscary. I am not
convinced by the argument of the hon. Member for Stroud about the need
for lots of local authorities and such bodies to get involved, because
we are talking about a pretty narrow sphere of agricultural functions.
That is why it is important that the principal people involved are
those who are carrying out such activities on the common: the owners of
the rights of common. So, I support amendment No. 101.
My amendment No. 51 is
slightly different, and seeks to say that the standard constitution
should
determine the proportion of the members who should be owners of the
rights. I would go along with the majority being in that situation, as
the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire suggested. There needs, at
least, to be a reference about the proportion of the association who
should be owners of rights. I come on to amendment No. 65,
which raises an issue that I raised briefly on Second Reading and which
has not yet come up during Committee. On reflection, the amendment is
probably directed at slightly the wrong place in the clause, but that
is a separate issue and can be addressed at another time. The principal
issue is about who should be in the association. This following is not
necessarily an exclusive list, but it should be inclusive. Obviously,
the commons rights holders should be involved. It is essential that the
owner or owners of the land should also be in the association, as
should tenants of the land.
I particularly want to refer
to the last group in my amendment, which is the holders of sporting
rights. I wish to do so because the holders of sporting rights will
hold them by virtue of the owner of the land. As I understand the law,
they will be leasing the rights not from the commons or the rights
holders, other than perhaps in extreme situations, but from the owner
of the land. The obvious example would be those commons that are also
grouse moors, but many smaller commons will have rough shooting or
other conventional forms of shooting sports taking place on them. The
shooting rights will be leased from the owner of the land, often for a
significant period, possibly 10
years. I know that
the hon. Member for Sherwood takes an interest in such things and that
the Minister will know that the value of sporting rights can be
influenced over several years of practice in developing the sporting
activity, habitat and so on. Therefore, I am concerned that the commons
association could take action that was to the serious detriment of the
holder of the sporting rights over a period of time. If someone has
just signed a 10-year sporting lease when the commons association comes
along and makes management decisions according to functions under
clause 31, which are extremely deleterious to the sporting capacity of
the land, that person would have no comeback. That would be a very
serious situation. I
am not suggesting that simply being a member of an association would
prevent such situations, but the holders of sporting rights should at
least be in the association, which is why I included them in amendment
No. 65. I hope that the Minister will understand—picking up the
earlier gentle gibe of the hon. Member for Sherwood—that this is
not some sort of throwback to antiquated support for landowners, but a
recognition that sporting rights are an extremely valuable commodity to
the individual and to the local economy of a number of areas. Grouse
moors, in particular, add huge sums of money to local communities and
the people undertaking rough shoots on more conventional common land
will be ordinary working people enjoying a day out with a gun and a
dog, perhaps. The important point is that their rights need to be taken
into account, if not totally protected, in the setting up and
constitution of an association, which is why they are included in
amendment No. 65.
Mr.
Dunne: May I illustrate for the benefit of the Committee
some of the problems posed by introducing too much democracy into some
of these associations? The example I would like to cite relates to a
common in my constituency and the Stiperstones commoners association,
which has three holders of grazing rights, one of whom is retired and
is not exercising his rights. The common is a substantial one covering
an area of 1,000 acres, with only two practising graziers. If the local
authorities and the landowner—I support the contention of my
hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire that the landowner
and the tenant of the land should have rights—were to be
included in the commons association and too many other organisations
were involved, the graziers, under the proposals in some of the
amendments, would be automatically outvoted in associations. That
cannot be
right.
Mr.
Drew: That is the whole point of trying to democratise
these bodies: to energise graziers so that they come back to use and
advance their rights properly. I accept that there may have to be a
balance between the rights of the grazier, the owner and other bodies,
but that is exactly the problem with a number of commons associations
at the moment. They do not have any life and they are effectively
inert.
Mr.
Dunne: The hon. Gentleman makes the point that I am trying
to make. In many cases, graziers are not there to take up the grazing
rights. The land does not have the capacity to sustain more livestock.
Therefore, it is down to the few people who remain actively involved in
it to continue to enter into management agreements to preserve
agricultural activity on these commons. If we try to put in place a
prescriptive system for the management of the great diversity of common
lands, we are in great danger of over-regulating what in many cases
requires a very light touch.
6.30
pm
Jim
Knight: Some interesting points have been made during this
debate. Amendment No. 101 would require a standard constitution or an
establishment order to ensure that commons rights holders have a
majority of votes in the association. Each commons association will be
different because of the numbers and characteristics of its commons. It
will not always be appropriate for rights holders to be in the majority
in an association, especially on a lowland common where common rights
are not exercised actively or perhaps even on the common to which the
hon. Member for Ludlow referred where there are only two active
graziers. However, when an association consists of agriculturally
active commons it may be appropriate for active rights holders to have
a majority. It is important to retain flexibility so that the
association can be tailored to local
circumstances. The
hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire was not questioning
flexibility or a standard constitution, but how the two fitted
together. If it would help him, at the end of my comments on the
previous clause I said that that will reduce demands and potential
costs on those seeking to form associations because they would be able
to see a
standard constitution agreed by both Houses. However, as for
flexibility, we can vary away from that if the national authority
chooses to do so to suit local
circumstances. | 
