May I thank all hon. Members for their kind messages and the Officers of the House, members of staff and members of the public who were so kind to me during my absence? It is very appropriate that I should come back to call questions to the Secretary of State for Health.

First, let me warmly welcome you back to the joys of Northern Ireland business, Mr. Speaker. I know that there will be cross-party unity on that in Northern Ireland.

With permission, I wish to make a statement about the future of Northern Ireland. The last 10 years have seen many crucial decision points in the peace process. One was eight years ago, when the people chose peace over conflict, consent over coercion and a positive future over a poisonous past. Now there is another choice. Before the end of this year, Northern Ireland's political leaders and elected Assembly members must decide whether to take responsibility for their people's future, as they have been mandated to do, or to opt for political cryonics. They must decide whether to bring an end to Northern Ireland's democratic deficit, or to see locally unaccountable direct rule stretch into the foreseeable future.

I firmly believe that Northern Ireland is governed best when governed locally, and I firmly believe that that view is shared by the people of Northern Ireland. Now is the time to prove them right. Direct rule was a 1970s solution to a 1970s problem. Since then, Northern Ireland has moved on and changed beyond all recognition. It is light years away from the troubles. Where once there was economic stagnation, there is now vibrancy. Where once there was the futility of cyclical violence, there is now the stability and prosperity of peace. And where once the political landscape was riven by sectarianism, there is now a shared desire among all the parties to move forward and take their proper places in the devolved institutions to which they were elected. The only real argument is when and how.

The experiences of devolution in Scotland and in Wales have demonstrated the huge benefits that local politicians exercising locally accountable power can reap. Both nations have seen increased self-confidence, increased economic growth, increased social cohesion and an increased international profile. Northern Ireland has also undergone a positive transitional experience, but the potential of full devolution remains tantalisingly out of reach.

The blunt truth is that Northern Ireland is in great danger of being left behind as not only the rest of the United Kingdom strides on successfully, but the Republic of Ireland continues to be one of the biggest global success stories of our generation. It is now for Northern Ireland's politicians to catch up—and catch up fast. Northern Ireland's people demand nothing less. From sport to science and from culture to business, Northern Ireland has some of the brightest talent anywhere in the world. It is time that its politicians lived up to that promise and showed vision and courage.

The arrangements that the Prime Minister and Taoiseach outlined on 6 April give Northern Ireland's politicians the chance to close the chapter on the mistrust that has blighted the process since the suspension of the institutions in October 2002. However, if the parties do not choose to close that chapter of mistrust soon, the Government will be forced to close the book on devolution for the foreseeable future.

The Independent Monitoring Commission has stated unequivocally that the IRA no longer represents a terrorist threat. That is momentous and should be acknowledged as such. Where there are issues around criminality, they must be—and indeed are being—addressed by the police, with the support of the whole community. Where there are issues of trust, they can be resolved only by political dialogue.

Over the past few months, we have held discussions with all political parties in Northern Ireland with a view to restoring the political institutions. However, as the Prime Minister and Taoiseach made clear in their joint statement on 6 April, we cannot, and will not, try to force Northern Ireland's politicians to take that final step forward. We can only point them towards what we believe to be the best road ahead. We have come to the point at which those outside the Northern Ireland political parties themselves can do little more to facilitate the process. I know that the decisions that will have to be taken are not easy, but honestly believe that history will not look kindly on those who miss the opportunity that stands before us.

Copies of the joint statement made by the Prime Minister and Taoiseach on 6 April have been placed in the Library of the House, as have the speeches that they delivered. I will further place the Prime Minister's speech on record in a written ministerial statement tomorrow.

The joint statement indicated that the Northern Ireland Assembly would be recalled on 15 May, with a view to reaching agreement to restore the institutions by 24 November. Last week, I nominated a new Presiding Officer, Eileen Bell. I have every hope that she will soon be overseeing the transition of the Assembly to full devolution. A woman of real courage, strength and ability, she is highly regarded by all, and could be the symbol of a new political era of co-operation and progress, leaving behind sectarianism and division.

We will aim to discuss with the parties next week how the Assembly will function after 15 May, including its standing orders. I will also be introducing an emergency Bill on 20 April, for taking through the House next week. I know that this is an extremely tight timetable, but the Bill will have only about half a dozen clauses in total and hon. Members will appreciate the urgency. We need to get the parties back in the Assembly and talking now to provide them with the maximum opportunity for securing agreement by 24 November at the very latest.

The Bill will arrange for the Assembly to be recalled with the express purpose that it sets about electing a First and Deputy First Minister on a cross-community basis, and then forms an Executive, under the d'Hondt formula. As soon as that is done, power will automatically be devolved, as happened in December 1999, and all the Assembly's other functions will be resumed.

Our hope and intention is that the Assembly will elect an Executive within six weeks, as envisaged by paragraph 35 of strand 1of the Good Friday agreement. However, if that time frame proves to be too short, the Assembly will have a further 12-week period after the summer in which to complete the task. During that period, it will be open to the parties to engage in further discussion, both among themselves and with the Government, on improving the running of the institutions. The Assembly will also have opportunities to prepare for government by considering issues that are crucial to the future of Northern Ireland, such as the economy and reforms to education, water charges and public administration.

The Bill will have obvious implications for Orders in Council. Some of the forthcoming Northern Ireland legislation on transferred matters will obviously be appropriate for consideration by the restored Assembly, and Ministers will naturally be willing to take account of views on such matters, if they are provided on a cross-community basis.

It would be preferable to all democrats if the parties were quickly able to take up the mantle of government so that the decisions that affect the everyday lives of people in Northern Ireland were taken by locally accountable politicians. However, in the meantime, I will not delay implementing vital reforms that this Government consider essential to the better running of Northern Ireland. While those decisions may not always be popular, they are necessary in the public interest, to put Northern Ireland on the road to becoming world class.

If, however, the Assembly has been unable to achieve a power-sharing Executive by 24 November, there will be no choice but to cancel Assembly Members' salaries and allowances forthwith, and to cancel the election due in May 2007. It would be absurd to elect Members unwilling to discharge their duties to an Assembly that would not have sat for more than four and a half years.

Restoration of the Assembly and Executive would then be deferred until there was a renewed political willingness to exercise devolved power. The two Governments would then continue their commitment to developing north-south co-operation and structures as set out in the Good Friday agreement. In this scenario, the agreement would remain very much alive.

It is crucial that the parties keep talking—not just to the two Governments, but to each other. We are committed to facilitating dialogue to achieve this over the months ahead in whatever forum is required—full plenary sessions of the Assembly, smaller forums of designated members, or all-party discussions, including with the Prime Ministers.

I want to re-emphasise that the strategy that the two Governments have agreed is designed for success, not failure. Our overwhelming desire is that local politicians take power back into their own hands, just as Scotland and Wales have done to great effect. It is time for Northern Ireland's politicians to show leadership and good faith—in themselves, in each other and in the people who elected them.

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for making this statement at the earliest opportunity after Parliament's return and also for his courtesy in letting me have early sight of its contents. I say at the start that I hope that this initiative by the Government succeeds. My party will support the Secretary of State in this initiative. However, I have several concerns and questions.No one in this House does anyone in Northern Ireland any favours by trying to wish away the serious difficulties that still exist. Like the Secretary of State, I want to see devolution working in Northern Ireland. The people of Northern Ireland should have the right to elect representatives to take decisions on their behalf and to hold those representatives to account for their stewardship. But the truth is that we will not get agreement on an Executive, and certainly not by 24 November, unless we are able to overcome the deep mistrust that exists between the different communities and political parties.

My party accepts that the republican movement has come a long way in the past year—would that it had done so much earlier—and the IRA's statement of 28 July 2005 and the act of decommissioning in September were highly significant developments. But does the Secretary of State agree with me that the responsibility now rests primarily with republicans to persuade democrats from both the Unionist and nationalist traditions that their renunciation of violence and their declared commitment as republicans to democratic politics are both permanent and irreversible? Does the Secretary of State accept that it would be wrong to have Sinn Fein Ministers in the Government of Northern Ireland while the IRA continues to be involved in criminal activity, or before Sinn Fein is prepared to give its unequivocal backing to the police and the courts in Northern Ireland? Does he further accept that those moves need to come before an Executive are formed, and not at some unspecified point in the future when powers over policing and justice can be devolved?

In that context, I hope that the Secretary of State will be able to comment briefly on the fact that two very serious crimes have taken place in the last fortnight. In both cases, there has been much speculation about the involvement of members of the provisional republican movement. Clearly, if such involvement were to be proven, the task of building confidence and restoring devolution would be a hard one—I suspect that it would be impossible—in the time frame that the Government now envisage. Will the Secretary of State tell the House, so far as he is able to without compromising ongoing police investigations, what information he has received?

First, does he believe allegations that the murder of Denis Donaldson was carried out by the provisional IRA? The Prime Minister has declared very confidently that people who wanted to wreck the peace process carried out that crime. That confidence suggests that Ministers possess reliable information about the matter. At the time of the Northern bank robbery, both the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Garda swiftly concluded that the IRA was to blame, and said so publicly. Have the two police forces yet come to any similarly firm conclusion about who was responsible for the murder?

Secondly, the Secretary of State will know that on 10 April the Garda arrested three men in Westmeath, after a lorry carrying vodka worth €300,000 was hijacked. Have the Irish authorities told him whether Dublin press reports are true and that the alleged criminals were known provisional activists? It has been claimed that one of them was released under the early-release provisions of the Belfast agreement.

In the wake of that incident, the Irish Justice Minister commented:

"As long as the IRA continues to exist and the IRA constitution continues to be treasonable and subversive then problems will continue to remain".

Does the Secretary of State agree with Mr. McDowell's assessment?

The joint statement of 6 April listed education among the issues that the new Assembly should discuss as part of its preparation for government. Will the Secretary of State therefore agree to put off his proposed education reforms, at least until the Assembly has considered them and its views are known?

Regarding the internal governance of Northern Ireland, will the Secretary of State confirm that it remains entirely a matter for the UK Government accountable to this Parliament? We on the Conservative Benches appreciate the efforts and commitment of successive Irish Governments, and of the Taoiseach personally, to a lasting settlement. I believe that political, economic and cultural relationships between the UK and the Republic of Ireland should be at least as close as those between any two modern European democracies that share a common land border. However, will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that it is a fundamental principle of the Belfast agreement and the entire political process that the constitutional status of Northern Ireland as part of the UK is accepted by all sides—albeit unwillingly in some cases—unless and until the people of Northern Ireland freely consent to change? Does he therefore agree that any form of joint authority would be in breach of that principle of consent?

On the emergency legislation that the right hon. Gentleman has announced, my colleagues and I will want to look at the detail as soon as it is available. However, once we have done so, we hope to be able to support the Government and to help to bring the Bill into law as quickly as possible.

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman can give me some reassurance about a particular anxiety of mine—that the Bill might include powers for Ministers to amend Acts of Parliament by order. Will the Bill contain such powers? If the answer is yes, will he promise that it will impose very strict limits on both the extent and duration of those powers?

First, I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his good wishes, and for putting it on the record that, in general terms, the Opposition will support the initiative. I agree that it is in no one's interest to attempt to wish away what he described as the serious difficulties afflicting this process.

There is deep mistrust, and I agree that responsibility does indeed lie with republicans to ensure that everyone—not just their supporters, but their opponents—is persuaded that they are genuinely committed to peaceful and democratic means; that they have, as the Independent Monitoring Commission has reported, rejected their past commitment to terrorism; and that they are committed to rejecting criminality, about which I will say more in answer to the hon. Gentleman's specific questions.

The hon. Gentleman asked for further information on the murder of Denis Donaldson and on the vodka heist. He asked for further information on whether they were carried out by the IRA. I accept that he himself made a distinction between those events and the Northern Bank robbery, which the Chief Constable was quick to say was the responsibility of the IRA. No firm conclusions have been yet drawn by the police on either matter, and there is certainly no evidence that I have seen, or that the police have provided to me, or any intelligence, that either very serious incident, not least the barbaric murder of Denis Donaldson, was sanctioned, approved or in any way organised with, as it were, prior thought by the leadership of the provisional IRA.

Let me quote for the House's benefit a statement issued by the IRA on 13 April—[Interruption.] I think it important to put this on the record.

"The IRA has no responsibility for the tiny number of former republicans who have embraced criminal activity. They do so for self-gain. We repudiate this activity and denounce those involved. The IRA remains committed to the peace process . . . The leadership . . . believes that it is possible to achieve the republican goal of a united Ireland through the alternative route of purely peaceful and democratic means."

I may add that the president of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams, has made clear his total condemnation of the murder and of criminality that may be carried out in the name of republicans.

On education reform, I am happy to provide assurances that I believe it would be a suitable matter for discussion in the Assembly if the Assembly chose to discuss it and if there were all-party agreement to do so. Undoubtedly, if all-party policy positions were agreed by the Assembly, the Education Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Angela E. Smith)—and I would want to take careful note of them. We intend to bring forward an order next month to set the overall architecture, but there will be considerable scope once the Assembly has got going to determine the exact new admission arrangements, the nature of the pupil profile, curriculum detail and so forth. Those would be appropriate issues for the Assembly to discuss, but no one, I think, is in any doubt about—I have heard no one defend it to me—the continued existence of a method of deciding a child's future on the basis of two one-hour tests, after which their future opportunities are either closed or opened up. There is agreement, however, that there is genuine debate on the issue and there will be an opportunity to influence the future over exactly how the new regime will operate.

On the supremacy, as it were, of the United Kingdom Government in the governance of Northern Ireland, I am happy to agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman. There is absolutely no question of joint authority or joint governance. There is plenty of scope, however, and the hon. Gentleman implied that he agreed with this, for practical co-operation, as provided for through the architecture of the Good Friday agreement, which was endorsed by the people of Northern Ireland, for cross-border co-operation in a number of areas—for example, on energy, the economy, child offending, and getting rid of unfair mobile phone roaming charges so that there is a single, all-Ireland rate. On those sorts of issues, and on many more, there is tremendous scope for future co-operation, much of which, indeed, is already taking place. But there is no question of joint authority. There is no question of that at all.

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's general support on the emergency legislation and will be happy to take him through the detail when we have an opportunity to do so. I am being very cautious about Orders in Council; I know there is sensitivity to them in Parliament, both in this place and the House of Lords. However, I want some flexibility to make progress. I had hoped to include in the Bill provision by Order in Council, should we be in a position to reach a final agreement, and also to amend the strands 1 to 3 arrangements, which everybody understands will be necessary in terms of the original architecture; for example, the Democratic Unionist party has made its position clear.

I had hoped to include an Order-in-Council provision in the Bill, but it seems that there is opposition to that, so we shall have to look at emergency legislation later in the year, should there be the conditions for the necessary all-party agreement and the restoration of the institutions that we desire. I shall obviously consult the hon. Gentleman on all the detail as we go through the process.

I welcome your return to health and work, Mr. Speaker, although I am not sure that we are the most therapeutic company this afternoon.

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and for his advance courtesies in connection with it. I welcome his indication that he has decided not to seek Order-in-Council powers in the Bill to adjust the working of the institutions. He will understand that it is not just because some of us were celebrating the 1916 rising this weekend that we would not be happy to see the Secretary of State take such powers in relation to institutions that were mandated uniquely by all the people of Ireland in our generation.

In relation to other aspects of the statement, the Secretary of State indicated that there would be discussions with the parties next week about how the Assembly might function, including standing orders. The key question in those discussions will be who is to decide and when. We are told that the measure will give the Assembly a new working status and that it will not be just a shadow Assembly, so will there be a similar new working status for the north-south arrangements in that period, beyond care and maintenance?

In relation to a number of decisions, including water charges and the review of public administration, the Secretary of State indicated that Ministers would take account of views provided on a cross-community basis. Will he colour in the difference between taking account of views and abiding by them?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his opening points.

On the hon. Gentleman's question about changes to strands 1 to 3 of the Good Friday agreement, despite his opposition to my taking powers through Order in Council, the reason I was planning to do so is that I am concerned about running up against the deadline and making the changes in time. There will be a brief spill-over period after we come back in October before Parliament prorogues and then an equally brief time after Queen's Speech—I do not yet know the date, but Members can imagine the timetable—before we reach 24 November. I was concerned about having enough scope to take through emergency legislation, but if that is what we have to do, we shall have to try.

However, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that we shall have to make changes in the strands to get all the parties together. There is no point in keeping our heads in the sand. The DUP has a mandate and has made it absolutely clear that it requires changes, and I acknowledge that. The Government stand ready to make those changes once we can achieve agreement on them, and that will require legislation. As I said, I would have preferred to have done that a little more easily through an Order in Council, on which I would have consulted widely and sought agreement, but obviously separate primary legislation will be necessary. Let us hope that, given the timetable, we can make things dovetail.

On standing orders, the Secretary of State—in other words myself—will have responsibility for drawing them up, as happened last time. We want to consult all the parties about them in detail, especially the Northern Ireland parties that will be in pole position, to try to reach agreement. The Assembly can of course amend the standing orders, as it can confirm or reject my nomination of Eileen Bell as the Speaker; the question of any deputies to be appointed will also be provided for in the Bill.

I do not envisage any new status for north-south co-operation during this period, but we will, of course, continue to do what we have been doing energetically for the past year and indeed before to gain everyone's support for co-operation on the economy and a range of other matters. We will discuss the possible shape of additional north-south co-operation, but we do not want to get into the business of pre-empting that. We want the Assembly and the institutions restored, and we want north-south co-operation to proceed on basis that it has successfully done so recently.

Obviously, an order will be introduced fairly soon on water charges, and I will want to take into account everything that the Assembly might want to say about that, particularly views that command cross-community support in the Assembly and that address the public expenditure consequences of adopting a different approach. Of course, if the Assembly voted unanimously to reject water charges, I would have to take account of that, but I would want to know where we would find the £200 million or so of extra public expenditure generated by those water charges and where we would get the finance to invest in Northern Ireland's decaying sewerage and water system. Finding those answers would be the responsibility of anyone who addresses the issue in the Assembly.

I also thank the Secretary of State for early sight of his statement.

The Liberal Democrats welcome the IMC's statement that the IRA no longer presents a terrorist threat, but we share the Secretary of State's concern and, indeed, that of the Conservative spokesperson regarding the ongoing involvement of paramilitaries in criminal activity. Can the Secretary of State give us an assurance that the Government still regard organised paramilitary crime as a breach of ceasefire?

On the Government's clear targets for the Assembly's reconstitution, we also agree that decisions on matters such as health, transport and education are best taken locally, by locally elected politicians. I must press the Secretary of State to answer the questions that he has already been asked. Rather than saying that he would take account of a unanimous view of a reconstituted and properly functioning Assembly, why does he not give us an assurance that the Government will respond literally to cross-party opposition to, for example, the introduction of tuition fees in Northern Ireland, which he knows commanded the unanimous opposition of parties in Northern Ireland?

Can the Secretary of State give us an assurance that, if a reconstituted Assembly were to vote unanimously in opposition to, for example, tuition fees, the Government would repeal those fees? Similarly, can he be a bit more specific about what he means by taking account of the views of Northern Ireland politicians in a reconstituted Assembly on the profound changes proposed to the secondary system of selection? Can he assure us that, rather than simply taking account of and then ignoring the Assembly's views, the Government will act on them, even if the Government are forced to act differently in Northern Ireland from the way in which they have acted in England and Wales?

Finally, if this latest effort is to restore the Assembly properly, the Government must establish round-table and inclusive negotiations that genuinely involve all political parties. There must be no question of secret side deals, with one or two parties. Does the Secretary of State recognise therefore that, to achieve a permanent solution, all parties must be involved. Indeed, different deals with different parties undermine the talks process. If the Government want to achieve a lasting settlement, they must ensure that everyone works together, even if that is more time consuming than the quick-fix solutions that we have seen in the past. Although I have always been an optimist about the peace process, I have sometimes been a cynic about the Government's plans, because of the temptation to seek tactical answers in a strategic debate. If the Secretary of State can confirm that inclusive talks really are all-party talks and that they will be truly transparent and not involve secret, unwritten or written unilateral deals with individual parties, he can be most certainly assured of Liberal Democrat support.

I am grateful for that. I can confirm immediately that the talks will be genuinely all-party. Whatever happened in the past and whatever the arguments about that are, given the distrust that has set in over the past couple of years, we cannot proceed without all-party, inclusive negotiations. That would include the Alliance party, as well as all the other major parties in Northern Ireland.

I agree that there is still too much criminality—by loyalist paramilitaries and republican paramilitaries. That must be stopped. I find it encouraging that the leadership of both Sinn Fein and the IRA have said that they condemn it as well—the hon. Gentleman can make of that what he wishes. At least it is a positive agreement with the point of view that he was putting forward.

On education reforms, I was slightly surprised to hear an avowedly progressive party such as the Liberal Democrats standing absolutely solid by the 11-plus, as though it were the fount of all educational opportunity. The hon. Gentleman knows that we are talking about a decision on a child's future at age 10 or 11, which is taken as a result of a short test on one day, when that child's parents might have had an argument over breakfast or there might have been a riot overnight. That test can open the gate to a child's future, if they pass it, or close it shut—in some cases for good. That is not a defensible position for any progressive politician.

There has been a long period of consultation and the matter has been given much consideration. It is in the interest of parents, pupils and schools that we settle the issue to provide long-term clarity. However—this addresses the points that the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) made—there are a wide range of other issues that will need to be addressed: the pupil profile, the curriculum content, the entitlement framework and so on. Those issues will all have to be the subject of subsequent orders. I hope that those decisions will be taken by the Assembly itself.

As for tuition fees, I find it surprising that the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) did not say where he will find the money from.

We have already told you.

The hon. Gentleman may think that that is my responsibility, but he represents a party that has pretensions to government and yet he is not prepared to discuss the funding implications for higher education and student finance, as well as the policies themselves.

To conclude, I emphasise that the commitment to all-party inclusive talks is genuine and without reservation.

I add my voice to those who have already welcomed you back to the Chair this afternoon, Mr. Speaker. The whole House will appreciate and understand why the democratic parties in Northern Ireland do not want to trust Sinn Fein, but, in forming a coalition with the Liberal Democrats in the Scottish Parliament, the Labour party has shown that it is possible to form a working relationship with those who neither deserve nor receive our trust. Is it not about time that the Democratic Unionist party did the same?

I think that it is best if I just say to my hon. Friend, who makes his point with great eloquence and force, that Northern Ireland is Northern Ireland and Scotland is Scotland.

May I join others in saying that my colleagues and I are delighted to see you back in your place, Mr. Speaker? We are particularly pleased that you look so well.

I echo the shadow Secretary of State's comments about paragraph 10 of the Prime Minister's statement—the threat applied to Unionists should the date of 24 November not be met. That threat was crass and foolish, and is contrary to any concept of the principle of consent. I hope that the Secretary of State will make it very clear that there will be no constitutional change as a result of the Provisional IRA not meeting the deadline that is set for 24 November.

Will the Secretary of State also find some time to take his hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) to one side and explain to him the principle of the mandate? We are living in a parliamentary democracy and, in a parliamentary democracy, the electorate can change the mandate from one election to the next. The electorate have freely, at the ballot box, made it very clear in the Unionist community that they oppose the Belfast agreement. My colleagues and I have suggested the changes required to achieve a satisfactory agreement that can win the support of the Unionist community. There is a deficiency in the Prime Minister's statement, as it does not provide a road map to show how that can come about, and the timetable does not take account of the necessary steps to bring it about.

There is another deficiency in the timetable. The Prime Minister seems to have opted for the notion that the Unionist community can be timetabled into an Executive. The issue will be determined not by the clock but according to whether various conditions have been met and whether paramilitary and criminal activity has ended. That is the critical factor for my party. We want to move into devolution, and we want an Executive in Northern Ireland, but the principle of our mandate indicates that we can only share power with those who are committed to exclusively peaceful and democratic means.

Will the Secretary of State say very clearly at the Dispatch Box that he does not expect anybody to share power in government with those who continue paramilitary and criminal activity? I remind him that the Prime Minister's statement was sandwiched between two events—the killing of Denis Donaldson, in which members of the Provisional IRA were involved, and the vodka heist in the Republic, in which members of the Provisional IRA were involved. The Unionist community wants to be certain that the provisional IRA did not organise and sanction those events.

First, I am sure that the House will join me in wishing the leader of the hon. Gentleman's party, the right hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) a happy 80th birthday, which fell on the day of the joint statement by the Taoiseach and the Prime Minister—I do not know whether that was pre-planned by divine intervention.

May I reassure the hon. Gentleman that there are absolutely no threats to the constitutional status of Northern Ireland in the statement by the Taoiseach and the Prime Minister or in anything that I say at the Dispatch Box today? That constitutional status was decided by the people of Northern Ireland in a referendum, and it can only be changed by them in a referendum. I reiterate that that is our policy, and the policy of every good democrat in the House and outside. Nothing in that statement, and nothing that I have said today about north-south co-operation and practical matters, alters that at all, nor could it do so.

I agree that the principle of the mandate must be respected. The hon. Gentleman's party won a clear majority of the votes, and it is the largest party from Northern Ireland in this Parliament and, indeed, in the Assembly. It was elected on a platform that requires changes to the detail of the Good Friday agreement, and that is precisely what we will address when it comes to negotiating a final solution. There is no point other parties seeking to deny that, which is why I sought to address the matter in my early thoughts about the Bill. We will have to take it forward in another way if we reach the point where there is, as I hope that there will be, all-party agreement to restore the institutions, as I accept that that cannot be done without changes of the kind that we have discussed before, particularly in 2004, and that require further legislation.

On the question of paramilitary and criminal activity, the hon. Gentleman has seen the last few IMC reports, particularly the last one, which made it clear, as I said, that the IRA no longer poses a terrorist threat. The report made it clear, too, that although there are instances of localised criminality, there is no evidence that that is organised from the top. Indeed, it made it clear that criminal operations have been closed down by the organisation, which puts us on the right road. I accept that the hon. Gentleman's party is concerned about the matter. I am concerned about it too, which is why the police and the Assets Recovery Agency—this applies across the border—are pursuing those responsible for such criminality energetically. All the recent reports confirm that, whether the criminals are claimed to be republican or loyalist.

rose—

Before I call a Back Bencher, may I ask hon. Members to co-operate by asking the Minister only one supplementary question?

May I add my good wishes to you, Mr. Speaker, on your recovery and return? The Chair seemed a little empty in your absence, and we are very glad to have you back.

I am deeply concerned about the singular attention given by Secretary of State to the mandate of the Democratic Unionist party. The DUP has a mandate—it has about a third of the votes in Northern Ireland—and I respect it. However, my party has a mandate, too, and I would like the Secretary of State and the DUP occasionally to respect it. Other parties have a mandate. Most of all, however, the Good Friday agreement has a mandate—a bigger mandate and a more significant one than any individual political party's. It involves not just many of the political parties, but two Governments at national level and was endorsed by public referendum.

My concern also extends to the Secretary of State's reference to changing institutions. Does he believe that any of the proposed changes will make any difference? It was not issues surrounding the change of institutions that brought the agreement down, so will the changes that he proposes help us in any way to restore it?

I agree that it is not only the DUP that has a mandate; of course the SDLP has an important mandate and I listen to what that party says, too. I also agree that the Good Friday agreement has an even bigger mandate because it was endorsed by all the people of Northern Ireland and, indeed, by the people of the whole island of Ireland. The fact remains that, if a party makes it clear that it requires certain changes that are important to it, and has stood on such a platform—not changes to the fundamental architecture of the Good Friday agreement, because that remains in place; all the fundamental principles remain in place—there is no point in denying that that has occurred. There is every reason to expect, plan and provide for—as I intend to do—the opportunity to make those changes, if there is a commitment by all the parties to form the necessary agreement to restore the institutions. We would have to make those changes as part of that agreement and I do not see how the hon. Gentleman could, publicly or otherwise, really disagree with that.

I wish the Secretary of State success, but does he accept that there cannot be different standards of democratic integrity in different parts of the United Kingdom? Therefore, an absolute, complete and credible repudiation of criminality on the part of Sinn Fein-IRA is fundamental to the success of what he seeks to achieve.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman's point. I pay particular attention to what he says as he is Chairman of the Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs. I am not an historian and I have been less close than other hon. Members to what has been said in Northern Ireland in the past, but I do not remember the IRA ever talking about republicans who have embraced criminal activity. The ethos of the IRA and republicanism was that the British state is an unacceptable intrusion in Northern Ireland, and therefore it is legitimate to do whatever is necessary to get rid of it. What the IRA has said is a significant move forward. I agree with him, the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington), the deputy leader of the DUP and others that we must ensure that criminality is rooted out—absolutely.

Mr. Speaker, it is great to see you back and looking so splendid. I hope that you are well.

I support what the Secretary of State is trying to achieve in restoring a devolved Assembly to Northern Ireland, but is he convinced in his discussions with the DUP that that party actually wants the restoration of a devolved assembly? Is he convinced that it wants to reach an agreement? Is there not a danger of handing the DUP a veto over the whole future of the devolved process in Northern Ireland?

I do not think that there is any question of a veto. The DUP is a pro-devolution party: it has consistently said so. The issue is how to create the circumstances in which all the parties can agree. There will be no vetoes for anyone in that process.

I, too, welcome you back to the Chair, Mr. Speaker.

I welcome the Secretary of State's undertaking that there is no question of joint authority in the case of failure to meet the November deadline. Welcome, too, is his assurance that any progress will be based on trust, not coercion. In that context, he will have heard the words in the mouths of Irish Ministers last week referring to the November deadline as a last chance saloon, thereby raising suspicion that the Irish Government would retain some sanction over the governance of the Province if the deadline were not met. Will he make it absolutely clear that the governance of Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, will be for this Government and for this Parliament of the United Kingdom alone?

Of course, but, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows from his time as a Northern Ireland Minister, it is also important to co-operate as good democrats with an important neighbour across the border, the south of the island of Ireland. That is what the issue is about, and there is no question of sanctions being imposed against anybody. I have not used the phrase "last chance saloon", and the Taoiseach certainly did not use it. However, we cannot continue to have an Assembly that costs some £85 million a year and that does not meet or do its job, because that brings democracy into disrepute. That is our point, and we are giving people the opportunity to reach a conclusion, but it is a question not of sanctions, but of moving on if progress is not possible.

The Secretary of State knows that the Taoiseach held a press conference in Armagh, where he urged the Unionist parties to enter government with Sinn Fein-IRA. Will he answer the question that most men and women in the street are asking: if the Taoiseach thinks it so important and so right for the Unionist parties to enter government with Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland, why has he stated so categorically that he will have nothing to do with Sinn Fein entering government in the Republic?

The Taoiseach has answered that question himself by stating that his main disagreement with Sinn Fein in the Republic of Ireland concerns its economic policy, which he thinks would undermine all the success in the Republic.

I am delighted to see you back in the Chair this afternoon, Mr. Speaker.

I am delighted that the Secretary of State has announced that the Assembly will be restored, but will he clarify this contradiction? He has said that he firmly believes that Northern Ireland is governed best when it is governed locally and that the people of Northern Ireland share that view and he pointed out that the Assembly will be recalled on 15 May, in less than a month. With that in mind, will he explain why the Northern Ireland Office is driving through delegated legislation this afternoon to set in stone the seven super-councils?

That is not a contradiction. The policy was decided after years of consultation and has widespread support across the business community, the voluntary sector and independent opinion, which is the basis for the change. It is important to press ahead with the order to ensure that the new boundaries are in place for the next local elections in May 2009. The order does not address the substantive issue of the functions of the new councils—it would be very good if the Assembly were to address that—or detail the checks and balances that will apply. If would be good if the Assembly were to get on with the work on the legislation to implement the architecture of local government reform and reduce the number of councils from 26 to seven.

I am surprised that the Secretary of State has decided to name the new Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly, because surely even the humblest legislative assembly jealously safeguards its interest in choosing its own speaker. His statement was ambiguous, because he did not make it clear whether he was making a nomination, an indication of preference or an appointment. The existing standing orders of the Northern Ireland Assembly provide for the retiring Deputy Speaker, who has been re-elected, to preside at the election of the new Speaker, but will that take process place? What are the ground rules for the election of the Speaker—is it a nomination or is it an appointment?

I am doing very little different from what was decided when the Assembly was first convened. There is obviously a responsibility to ensure that somebody presides. I think that Eileen Bell is the right person to do that, and therefore she will be in the Chair on the opening day. It is open to the parties to change that decision, as it is for them to appoint deputies if they choose to do so.

What about the existing standing orders?

The standing orders will need to be changed for a whole number of reasons that will become apparent when we publish the emergency Bill.

While warmly supporting what the Secretary of State is endeavouring to achieve and wishing him well, may I gently put it to him that when he asks the political parties in Northern Ireland to close this chapter of mistrust, he is treating each of those parties equally? That is something of an insult to the democratic parties that are totally non-violent and it does not make his task any easier in achieving a lasting settlement.

Clearly, those parties that have consorted with or organised criminality in the past must be treated in a different way. I do not disagree with the right hon. Gentleman about that. However, the principle that I was trying to express was that Unionists need to be sure that republicans have put behind them all commitments to paramilitary activity and criminality, while republicans and nationalists—Sinn Fein and the Social and Democratic Labour party—have to be certain that Unionists will form a power-sharing Executive with them. There is trust to be built from both ends. That is what this initiative is designed to achieve, and I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman's support for it in principle.

I am delighted to see you in your place, Mr. Speaker.

Does not the Secretary of State surprise this House in rewriting the last Independent Monitoring Commission report, which said that the IRA is still heavily engaged in criminal activity? How can he accept, or want us to believe, that the IRA really has turned its back on criminal activity when in fact the Donaldson death and the recent criminal activity in the Irish Republic are clearly attributed to members of the Provisional IRA?

Let us see what the police say in their investigations about those two matters. As I recall, the last IMC report said that the IRA had turned its back on paramilitary activity and had closed down a series of criminal operations, but—on this I agree with the hon. Gentleman—indicated that members were still engaged in criminal activity. There was no evidence that that was organised, planned or in any way led from the centre. We are about to receive another IMC report, so let us see what it says and whether it can help to build the trust that the hon. Gentleman and his party are entitled to have and demand.

I noticed that, in answering the questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) concerning the murder of Denis Donaldson, the Secretary of State was very particular in talking about the leadership of the Provisional IRA. Does he have any information or intelligence from the police or the security services that members of the IRA were involved in that murder? If that information comes to light in the next few days or months, what will he do about it?

As I say, we will have to see what the police say when they have completed their investigations. We are fully and actively supporting the police in the Republic and our own police—who are co-operating on this matter—and our security services in trying to track down those who are responsible. When we find that out, we will obviously be prepared to acknowledge it, whoever they are.

I, too, welcome you back, Mr. Speaker. I am sure that you are very happy to be released from what I think that you described as your medical house arrest.

May I ask the Secretary of State about the contradictory message that comes from this statement? He says that the Assembly will have opportunities to prepare for government and discuss crucial issues such as education. A couple of paragraphs later, he says that he will not delay in implementing vital reforms. Indeed, we have heard today that some of those are being pushed through later this afternoon. Will he make it clear what it is to be? Is he going to put on hold those parts of Government policy, such as the education reforms, which are opposed by 62 per cent. of people in Northern Ireland, and the changes in public administration, or are we going to see a disgraceful flurry of activity as he pushes through legislation that he knows does not command widespread cross-community support and would never be accepted by a devolved Administration were one up and running in Northern Ireland?

On education, if the Assembly can reach a cross-party consensus that seeks to change in some fundamental or other way what the Government are doing, I will obviously have to listen to it. I must return a question to the hon. Gentleman: will he get involved in the serious process of beginning to build trust and share government? Without giving offence to anybody, it sometimes seems that the political debate in Northern Ireland is conducted as though the world is standing still. I have just returned from India on a trade mission for Northern Ireland. We see big companies in India, such as the Tata Group, recruiting 6,000 graduates a month in order to drive forward their competitiveness. Northern Ireland cannot stand still. In particular, we cannot stand still with an unreformed education system that palpably fails at least a third of its children. We must have reforms to have high skills for everybody. That is what the debate is about.

The Secretary of State said in his statement, "Ministers will naturally be willing to take account of views on such matters, if they are provided on a cross-community basis." Can he explain what that means? Would he stake his house on the Government implementing changes recommended by the Assembly?

The statement, which the hon. Lady has just quoted back at me, made it clear that, if there was a cross-community vote, I and my ministerial team would want to take account of it on a range of issues. I hope we can achieve a situation in which such cross-community votes would be possible on all the concerns that she has, and on other matters.

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Housing Act 2004 so as to repeal provisions relating to Home Information Packs.

May I say how delighted I am to see you back, Mr. Speaker? The wonders of Irn Bru, perhaps—a Glaswegian beverage, I am sure.

The purpose of the Bill is to remove section 5 of the Act, thus preventing the introduction of home information packs, which are due to come into force next June. In doing so, my Bill matches what the House demands of all ten-minute Bills—that there will be

"no charge upon the people, nor any drain upon the public purse".

My Bill will do much better. It will save the people and, more importantly, the public purse, tens of millions of wasted pounds every single year.

Home information packs are not intrinsically bad. It makes sense for anyone who wants to sell a house to have the information that buyers need readily available in advance. There is nothing to stop sellers getting local authority searches done long before anyone makes an offer. There is good reason for making comprehensive lists of fixtures and fittings. That is fairly standard. Searches and lists have to be completed before legal contracts kick in, so why not get on with it?

The trouble with home information packs, commonly known as HIPs, is that we cannot stick a For Sale board in our front garden unless we have already paid for a glossy information pack before we even start. We need not waste time ringing the man from Snipcock, Sidewinder and Winge. He is not allowed to market our des. res. unless our HIP is in order. The Government claim that HIPs will speed up house sales. Virtually all estate agents disagree and since they make money only when house sales are completed, they probably know what they are talking about.

A HIP will include local authority searches and land registry checks, which old-fashioned solicitors—there are one or two in this place—used to do, plus one or two brand-new elements, unfortunately. There is to be an energy rating for every home in the market, demanded by our friends from Europe, and a home condition report—a sort of survey that is not conducted by a surveyor, believe it or not. Needless to say, the home condition report is the most controversial element of the whole process.

Home condition reports have to be prepared by home inspectors—a new breed of instant professional invented by the Government. People may prefer their houses to be examined by a qualified surveyor with 30 years' experience—who would not? However, unless he or she chooses to take an expensive and much less rigorous course, he or she will not be permitted to prepare home condition reports.

There are currently only 30 trained home inspectors in England and Wales. By next June, the Government want to have 7,000—a tall order by anybody's standards. The Government claim that there are 4,000 in training but the true figure is much smaller. We cannot blame those who have embarked on that new career path—they have been promised lucrative futures. The price of a home information pack is £1,000 plus VAT and every house on the market will have to have one. So that is the territory of big new money, with big new VAT returns for—guess who—the Treasury, and very big bucks for those companies that already undermine high street solicitors and chartered surveyors. Those are the guys who will really clean up, selling the pack programmes to eager new home inspectors.

Every hopeful home inspector has already parted with £3,000 to learn the basics. I have two packs with me—they are large. Every hopeful home inspector will need a good quality laptop, broadband access, annual certification costs and a public liability insurance fee, which remains unknown. Nobody can tell us how much it will be. That is the trouble with the existing legislation—too many things have yet to be settled.

Let me give an example. Lawyers pay £5,000 a year each for insurance, and, because there are 55,000 lawyers, they get a discount. It therefore stands to reason that insuring 7,000 brand-new untried home inspectors is likely to cost much more. Maybe that is one reason why there are not enough recruits. In Wales, there are so few that the scheme can hardly start. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Bill Wiggin) will testify to that absence.

The training providers are getting twitchy too. Courses are now being offered cut-price for qualified surveyors. How would we feel if we had poured our redundancy money into a costly training course only to discover that surveyors were being fast-tracked? How would we feel if we suddenly learned that there would be five completely different certification schemes instead of one? The introduction of home information packs is being made up as it goes along. There are enough moving goalposts to make Wayne Rooney dizzy.

The Government promised details of an experimental dry run by now. We assumed that they would organise it. Silly us. The dry run will be undertaken exclusively by the home information pack industry. Estate agents, lawyers and surveyors will not even be involved. As a realistic test bed of how the system might work, it is a guaranteed failure. How can one replicate the stresses and strains of the housing market if one leaves out the people who actually deal with it?

I said that I was not against home information packs—I am not. I am not even against home condition reports if they offer buyers and sellers realistic alternatives, but they do not. Let us suppose that one wants a mortgage. One cannot simply wave the home condition report at the building society. The Council of Mortgage Lenders assures me that formal valuations will still be demanded at extra cost. Let us suppose that someone is worried about the condition of an outside wall—are not we all, with Westminster Hall? A home condition report will state that it is made of brick, stone or concrete and give a basic impression of wear and tear. The problem is that it is a matter of ticking boxes—hundreds of them. Hon. Members can borrow the reports if they like. However, one is not getting a proper survey from a properly qualified surveyor. Unless the transaction is incredibly simple, one will want to get a lawyer to take a look at the home information pack. The Government are forcing on us a way of selling our houses: this is yet another charge. If this new law was meant to save anyone any money, I cannot see how that is going to happen. Perhaps it was meant to speed up house transactions and stop gazumping, but it simply will not do so. The financial evidence suggests quite the opposite.

In Denmark—the only other country to have embraced this system—home condition reports were introduced in 1996. The Deputy Prime Minister of our country says that any fall in Danish house sales was insignificant, but I asked the House of Commons Library to investigate. It obtained figures from the Danish Parliament showing a 10 per cent. fall in house sales in three years. The chief executive of Denmark's estate agents association puts the cost higher still. He says that there are 25 per cent. fewer houses now on the market as a direct result of the introduction of HIPs. Can buyers, sellers and the economy of this nation afford to risk such damage?

Yes, there are many things wrong with the existing system of buying and selling houses. And yes, as in any organisation, there are unscrupulous estate agents, just as there are—from time to time, believe it or not—dodgy politicians. But that does not stop us. What is the point of substituting an untried, untested and largely uncontrolled new regime that will end up costing everyone extra?

I would like publicly to thank one of my constituents, Mr. Nick Lacey. Mr. Lacey is an enlightened estate agent who wants to see his industry properly licensed. He has pointed out to me the pitfalls of this new law and offered the only plausible explanation for why it was introduced: prejudice against the professionals. Someone in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister must class estate agents, lawyers and surveyors as some form of dodgy pond life, because the law that they have introduced is designed to take house sales right out of traditional hands. That is the ultimate aim. The future belongs to a new generation of Arthur Daleys, and an industry of greedy pack providers we have never even heard of. Even their own trade association admits that the structure is wide open to criticism and to cowboys. Let us stop this. Let us look again at the provisions before they come into force and ensure that they do not get through the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Ian Liddell-Grainger, Peter Bottomley, Mr. Mark Hoban, Mr. Roger Gale, Anne Milton, Angela Browning, Mr. David Wilshire, Tony Baldry, Mark Pritchard, Ann Winterton and Mrs. Eleanor Laing.

Housing Act 2004 (Amendment)

Mr. Ian Liddell-Grainger accordingly presented a Bill to amend the Housing Act 2004 so as to repeal provisions relating to Home Information Packs: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 12 May, and to be printed [Bill 167].

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

The Bill will provide for the better management of common land in England and Wales. It will ensure that some of our most valued uplands, open spaces and conservation sites remain effectively protected and recorded, and overhauls the existing patchwork of antiquated controls to bring them up to 21st century standards of better regulation. I know that the general principles behind the Bill have been widely welcomed, and I pay tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Jim Knight), who has done a great deal of work on the Bill.

At the core of the Bill are more than 2,000 square miles of registered common land in England and Wales, representing around 4 per cent. of our land area. Those places are fundamental to the character of our countryside. Some people might have in mind the ponies of Dartmoor, walkers will think of the high fells of the lake district, and families perhaps cherish the local common for games and walks on a Sunday afternoon. All these places are common land, and the Bill seeks to ensure that such places will be properly protected and managed for future generations. The Government have already undertaken limited legislation for common land in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, providing a general public right of access to commons. This Bill deals with other substantive issues on common land, such as their management and protection.

It might be helpful to explain what is meant by the term "common land". There is a popular misconception that common land is land owned by all of us, or even by no one—that it is, in effect, a public resource. It is not quite that simple. All common land is owned by someone, often a private landowner. Since time immemorial, however, common land has been subject to rights for certain people other than the landowner to use the land for their own benefit—for example, to graze livestock or take fallen wood for fuel. It is those rights over another person's land that make common land special.

Common land is important for many reasons. I have already spoken of the tremendous recreational resource that it provides. It also remains a fundamental part of the agricultural economy for many upland farmers, for whom commoning has been a way of life for generations. However, common land is also a crucial reservoir of biodiversity. Much of it has never been improved or enclosed, so many commons are havens for wildlife, while the absence of ploughing leaves many prehistoric remains intact.

Remarkably, around half the common land in England is designated as a site of special scientific interest. The wealth of information that we now have about both commons and SSSIs, and the action that we are taking to improve their condition, is vital to our overall work on biodiversity. We need to take action to protect biodiversity across the whole of the countryside, as well as in our most special and valuable sites.

Will the regulations provided for in clause 3(5) appertaining to the register of common land be subject to the negative procedure of the House or to its affirmative counterpart?

I will deal with those details later in my speech.

I do not need to tell the House that protecting our biodiversity is important, or that healthy, thriving and diverse ecosystems are essential to a healthy, thriving and diverse society. Biodiversity should be valued not just for its own sake but for all its benefits and opportunities—not only environmental benefits, but economic and social benefits, such as health, recreation and education.

Surveys have told us that people are more concerned about the quality of their natural environment than anything else, and biodiversity is a major part of that. Natural green spaces such as commons provide whole communities with access to recreation and a chance to experience nature at first hand. In the Cotswolds—at Minchinhampton common, for example—there is a strong sense of identity and community. The limestone downland is maintained through grazing by commons animals. Early purple orchids and cowslips can be seen there now, and later in the year there will be orchids, chalkhill blue butterflies and fritillaries. Large numbers of people visit from Stroud, Gloucester and the surrounding area, making use of local facilities and bringing many benefits to the local economy.

That all makes biodiversity an essential component of sustainable development. That is why the Government are firmly committed to achieving all our biodiversity targets for 2010, both at home and internationally. The England biodiversity strategy sets out our plans to integrate biodiversity into policy making and practice across all sectors and at all levels. We have achieved much already, including through new measures in the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006, but more is needed. We must also continue to report on and measure our progress, and to communicate and demonstrate clearly the value of biodiversity so that all its benefits can be realised.

In the context of common land, that poses a particular challenge. A lack of effective management has resulted in only 57 per cent. of SSSI commons being in good or improving condition—significantly less than the 72 per cent. of all SSSIs in similar condition. That is why the Commons Bill is one of our key tools for promoting biodiversity in this country. It will facilitate local management of commons where none has been achievable in the past, helping us to achieve our public service agreement target to get 95 per cent. of SSSIs into favourable condition by 2010.

As I have discovered, however, common land is never a straightforward subject. There is a complex web of interaction on our commons, which we must address holistically. This Bill provides for improved management and protection of commons, and brings the registration system up to date. Let me explain briefly how it works, and I will be glad to touch on the point raised by the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow).

Part 1 of the Bill is about the registration of common land. It builds on the Commons Registration Act 1965, which created registers of every common and town or village green in England and Wales. Unfortunately, the 1965 Act was flawed: registration was a snapshot only, with little provision for keeping records up to date. The Bill provides for the registers to be updated, and kept that way, with provision for electronic registers.

As one who used to practise in this area of law, I agree with the Minister that the 1965 Act was flawed. However, the proper implementation of the provisions in this welcome Bill will require some finance for local government. The problem in the past has been that there has been a Cinderella service, usually involving one man and his dog.

The Government accept that there may be financial implications, and we are prepared to put money into the start of the process, particularly for the purpose of professional skill building. I shall say more about that shortly. There will be an opportunity to rectify past mistakes relating to the 1965 Act, which have been raised by a number of organisations and people. The idea is to balance the scope to remove or add land to registers.

Part 1 also prohibits the severance of rights of common. Severance happens when rights of common attached to a farm adjoining a common are sold separately from the farm itself. That can mean that rights are exercised by people with no ties or obligations to the commoning community. It can lead to disruptive and damaging grazing practices. Our stakeholders asked us to ban severance, which we have done, but we have also listened to those who have said in another place that some local exceptions are needed. We propose to table amendments in the Standing Committee to respond to fears expressed by the Dartmoor Commoners' Council that it will not be able to exercise certain powers of a commons association. We take those fears seriously.

I can tell the hon. Member for Buckingham that the regulations for which clause 3(5) provides will be subject to negative resolution.

Clause 15 updates and clarifies the law relating to the registration of town or village greens. Greens are a vital part of our culture: they provide invaluable breathing space, right on the doorstep. The concept is ancient, but those areas remain as relevant today as they were when the locals used them for archery practice and community dancing. Yet greens are also a cause of controversy, particularly when development proposals arise. We have tried to strike a fair balance, and to provide certainty by consolidating the existing law on new registration of greens based on long use.

Significant Government amendments were tabled to clause 15 in another place, where we were told that there was a lack of clarity. We shall return to one or two of them in Committee. In the background is the high-profile greens registration case known as Trap Grounds, which was recently heard by the Judicial Committee of the other place and now awaits its ruling.

I support the principle of the Bill, but I should like my hon. Friend to clarify one aspect of the registration of town greens. In two cases in my constituency—in Fairfield, where planning permission exists for some social housing, and in New Mills, where planning permission exists for a magistrates court—applications for town green status have been lodged after the granting of planning permission. Clearly the purpose is not to respect and preserve the sites, but to frustrate a planning application. In both cases the development has already been delayed by several years, with no end in sight. I hope my hon. Friend can assure me that the Bill will clarify the position, and will make it less easy for town green applications to be used maliciously to frustrate the legitimate planning process.

I understand my hon. Friend's point. It is possible that people will use the Bill's provisions to frustrate developments that are important to communities, but the advantage of the Bill is that it will speed up the process, so it will not be possible to drag cases out for long periods. If my hon. Friend writes to me or to the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset, we shall be happy to examine the cases that he mentioned, and to contact him when we have done so.

We recognise the importance of the role of commons registration authorities in delivering the objectives of part 1. That is why we announced last year—this is relevant to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt)—that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was providing £100,000 to set up a professional association for commons registration officers, to help promote dialogue between local and central government on the implementation of the Bill. We will also fund the new burdens that the Bill will impose on local authorities.

A reliable registration system is key to the proper management of common land, and part 2 of the Bill is the key to that improved management. It allows the creation of commons associations with powers to manage commons locally and sustainably. Many of the benefits of common land come from its use in agriculture. It is the use of locally adapted breeds and customary practices such as hefting that has created the high landscape and biodiversity values in areas such as the Welsh and Cumbrian uplands. However, agriculture is changing. Many commons have deteriorated because of a lack of effective management. Some upland commons are being over-grazed, and under-grazing on lowland commons has led to scrubbing up and a consequent decline in their biodiversity and accessibility. However, those are not areas in which the Government can intervene easily. The Department is making common land eligible for entry into the higher level environmental stewardship scheme, as well as providing a supplement that recognises difficulties for communally managed land. However, financial incentives alone will not bring about improved management.

Commons can be managed from day to day only by those who share and have a real stake in the resource. Part 2 will recognise that, by putting in place a framework for resolving agricultural management problems on common land. It will allow the creation of local management bodies—commons associations—to manage agriculture, vegetation and the exercising of common rights. Some commons are already managed through voluntary local bodies, but they lack the powers to enforce their management decisions on everyone. At the moment, just one disagreeing voice can upset the management of a whole common. The statutory powers that will be given to commons associations will overcome that by enabling them to make and enforce rules.

I should stress that a commons association will be established only with the support of those who use and manage a common. A top-down approach cannot be imposed on those with an interest in a common, and we want to work with the grain, not against it.

My hon. Friend talks about support for the new associations. How will he gauge that support? Will there have to be 100 per cent. support, or substantial support? He knows the agricultural sector as well as I do, and finding agreement on a way forward is not always easy.

Yes, I have met the odd difficult farmer, so I know what my hon. Friend is talking about. We will be looking for majority support. We will not have a situation in which one person or a minority could have a veto. However, there will have to be a way of establishing majority support. Such issues are best explored in Committee, and I know that my hon. Friend will have an interest in that.

In the case of a large upland common in which most interest was from those with common rights, does the Minister envisage that those people would form a substantial majority of the association, or that they would have, for example, 50 per cent. of the vote?

Obviously, I would expect people with a direct involvement in a common to have a majority, but there are many people with interests in commons. I do not think that it is unreasonable that the structure of a commons association should be modelled on successful bodies that exist now, with a range of interests represented. For example, I think that there is a veterinary surgeon on the Dartmoor Commoners Council, who can give advice on animal welfare. I am not saying that that would be needed for every single association, but there should be flexibility so that the make-up of an association reflects its local area. Again, we can explore such matters in Committee.

Will the Minister say a little more about the higher level stewardship scheme that he mentioned a few minutes ago? How many commons have applied for the money already? What will happen to the money? Will it go to the people with grazing rights, or a committee, and will that distort the dynamics of the management?

Few commons are in the higher level scheme, although there are one or two. There are few commons in the scheme because that requires a management agreement, which means that there must be grazing at a certain stocking density, or specific kinds of management. Such an agreement thus requires the support of the majority of commoners on meeting the obligations of the agreement.

At the moment, there is no way of enforcing any agreement on the common. Many commoners would like to be in the higher level scheme, but they have not been able to join it because they have not been able to reach their side of the legally binding agreement on the management of the land. Under the Bill, the commons association will be able to agree the rules, apply them and meet its obligations under the terms of the agri-environment schemes. It will also be able to share the income out according to a formula that it decides. The Bill will give commons associations the power to enter into such arrangements and decide how they are going to share out the income, as they cannot do at present. That is one of the advantages of the Bill, as I know from talking to commoners and from my days of dealing with agri-environment schemes.

Is my hon. Friend envisaging some democratic representation on commons associations? Parish councils, in particular, often take responsibility for commons. My hon. Friend mentioned Minchinhampton, and I hope to talk more about that later. However, organisations mentioned in the Bill, such as the National Trust, have management responsibilities but are not always thought well of by those who have conflicting responsibilities. How will the associations evolve? Those are key issues.

They are important issues. Generally speaking, we would expect the associations to be elected so that they represent the interests of the groups for which they speak. We do not want to be too prescriptive at this stage, because different circumstances apply in different parts of the country, and the make-up of the associations may also need to be different. However, we want the systems to be democratic, open and transparent, and I know that my hon. Friend will lead on such details in Committee.

The Bill also deals with controls over works and fencing on common land. For 80 years, we have had a consent regime under the Law of Property Act 1925. It was recognised even then that commons required special protection to keep them open, unspoilt and accessible. That approach remains as relevant and necessary as ever—perhaps more so in this modern world. But the fact that commons are unique and warrant that extra protection does not mean that the system is perfect.

We have listened extensively to those who have said that the consent regime is at times unnecessarily slow and bureaucratic. The controls must be proportionate to the impact of proposed works. The Bill will enable us to modernise and streamline the system so that it is truly fit for purpose in the 21st century.

Students of section 194 of the 1925 Act will find much in part 3 of the Bill familiar. But in consolidating the existing controls into the Bill, we have done our best to iron out inconsistencies and provide clarity. We also aim to resolve situations in which works that might make sense on a common were completely prohibited by the existing management rules on certain commons.

There was considerable debate in the other place about whether minor works should be excluded from the consent regime. The reality is that enforcement against works with no material effect on access is extremely unlikely. But we have taken powers in the Bill to prescribe works that ought to be exempted from the consenting regime, and we will consult on the use of this power.

There were also strong views in the other place about who may take enforcement action against unlawful works on commons. The Bill will allow any person to ask the court to enforce against future unlawful works on commons. This is our response to arguments that those currently entitled to seek court action often fail to do so.

Part 3 of the Bill also re-enacts existing powers for local authorities to protect common land with no known owner. We shall also bring forward some minor amendments in Standing Committee to ensure that local authorities' existing powers to make management schemes for unclaimed common land remain relevant and up to date.

My hon. Friend has just reaffirmed that the Bill provides that people can apply to the county court in respect of future unlawful works. I think that the date mentioned in the Bill is 28 January 2005. However, the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000—the CROW Act—puts in place many obstacles to access, especially with regard to fences erected before that date. There is a clear conflict between that legislation and this Bill: how will it be resolved?

I am not sure that there is a conflict. My hon. Friend asks an important question, although the date in question is actually June 2005. The new power allows any individual to bring a court case over illegal activities on commons carried out from that date, although local authorities will still be able to act in respect of activities carried out before it. I hope that I can reassure my hon. Friend that that date should not be taken as the cut-off for legal action. We want to strike the appropriate balance with a significant new power to deal with illegal activities on commons, but that balance will, of course, be open to debate in Standing Committee.

Finally, I commend the scrutiny of the Bill in the other place, where it was the subject of a good and constructive debate. I followed closely the progress of the common land forum, many of whose recommendations are included in the Bill. In that forum, the question of access was very controversial, but it has been dealt with by the CROW Act and so does not affect the debate on this Bill.

The Bill is mainly about putting in place the sensible management and registration provisions that a wide range of stakeholders and organisations with a common interest in ensuring the proper, effective and sustainable management of our common land have been requesting for many years. The Bill gives us the necessary powers to do that, and I commend it to the House.

As the Minister said, this Bill has already been given the technical scrutiny that we expect of the other place. That is to be welcomed, as is the Bill in general. It is not a matter of great partisanship, as legislation in respect of common land commands wide support in the House.

The attitude of hon. Members to the matter of commons and greens will be influenced by their experiences. Traditionally, my own county of Cambridgeshire has relatively small commons, which are generally attached to local communities and usually cover an area of no more than 50 acres. Some of them have been covered by their own Acts of Parliament for many hundreds of years, but the Minister was right to point out that, conversely, commons elsewhere in England and Wales might cover many thousands of acres, with various different owners of the rights to grazing, pannage, turbary or estover.

The Minister was also right to say that about 3 per cent. of the land in England, and 8 per cent. of the land in Wales, is common land, covering a little over 500,000 hectares. However, 80 per cent. of land is privately owned, with almost half coming under the sites of special scientific interest designation. The Opposition entirely agree with the Government's desire further to enhance and protect our common land.

The Bill will have far-reaching effects. It is largely about remedying the deficiencies of the Commons Registration Act 1965, which was introduced by a previous Labour Government. However, given that the very first Act in respect of common land was passed in 1235, I doubt that this Bill will be the last word on the matter—especially as the Government, I regret to say, are ducking some of the most serious weaknesses arising from the 1965 Act.

We support the improvement of environmental conditions of common land and agree with encouraging sustainable management practice through the introduction of regulatory bodies, but the Government are addressing the problem of over-grazing on common land a bit late. It was the introduction of the single payment scheme last year that reduced farmers' incentives to increase their herd and flock sizes, and I hope that commons associations, Natural England, the Countryside Council for Wales and others do not have the problem of trying to deal with under-grazing, to which the Minister referred, as well as the over-grazing that has been a problem in the past. In principle, we agree that greater collective action is a welcome move towards achieving improved environmental and agricultural management. The Minister touched on the fact that the success of the Dartmoor commoners council is testimony to that.

The first part of the Bill deals with the registration of common land and with town and village greens. According to the explanatory notes:

"This replaces and improves the registration system under the 1965 Act, but using the same registers prepared under that Act."

We are concerned that there are known to be many deficiencies in the existing registers, which the Bill does not provide an opportunity to remedy. They particularly relate to the number of registered rights, which the Bill does nothing to tackle. There are numerous examples: for example, grazing rights may have been claimed that were significantly in excess of those traditionally attached to the land through the old system of levancy and couchancy.

It would be absurd not to understand the Government's reluctance to enter into what we all know to be a minefield, and I understand that there are also human rights concerns. However, I suggest that where there are obvious cases of deception, there cannot be any fair claim on human rights grounds. For example, I know of a common in my constituency where rights were claimed and registered by a person whose property had never previously had any such rights. If the Bill is to prove durable, it should enable people sensitively and sensibly to challenge previous rights.

The Bill prohibits severance of the rights of common, with the exceptions applying to commons associations, Natural England and CCW. I wholly support the principle of ending severance, but I question the logic of severed land being handed to Natural England and the others. While the intention may be that they do not use the rights, thereby dealing with over-grazing, there is nevertheless nothing in the Bill to stop them using them, perhaps becoming grazers themselves, or possibly cutting peat, catching fish or harvesting bracken. That could mean all those bodies having more rights over common land than are currently held by established voluntary commons and statutory commons associations.

I heard what the Minister said about the Dartmoor commoners council and the amendments that will be proposed. I have had discussions with the council over its concerns. Perhaps the Minister will tell us whether the Bill will result in a fair situation for the Dartmoor commoners council. In particular, will it let the council continue to hold the rights of registration, creation and severance that it holds under the present legislation? Other commons associations also deliver benefits for people on lands that are well managed for agricultural, environmental and public benefits, and I hope that they, too, can be dealt with under the amendments.

There is also a question why Natural England and the other organisations should need the rights that come from severance. If associations are to be responsible for ensuring that commons are not over-grazed or in other ways exploited, it should surely be to those associations that the severed rights are granted. Alternatively, they could revert to the owner of the dominant tenement.

Clause 13 deals with surrender and extinguishment and correctly ends the practice of common law extinguishing rights, but in doing so disposes of certain circumstances where extinguishment might be desirable. For example, rights in gross created by severance at some previous time in history that may have been abandoned, especially after passing through a few generations, would be an ideal way of reducing the total number of over-grazing rights. However, that opportunity would be lost under the Bill. It seems contradictory to use human rights as an excuse for not removing rights that were either fraudulently obtained or have been abandoned, while clause 15 of the same Bill would confiscate land from a private owner by allowing it to be registered as a green and, in effect, to become worthless. Where are the human rights in that example?

The Minister and the hon. Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt), who has left the Chamber, said that the provisions largely repeat those in existing legislation, notably the 1965 Act, but there are serious concerns that for land claiming village green status they have become increasingly relaxed. Opponents to new developments can argue that land should be registered as a village green if they can prove that local inhabitants have indulged in so-called lawful sports and pastimes for at least 20 years. I have great regard for the Minister, but he may not have taken on board the seriousness with which that issue is viewed not only by his hon. Friend but in several parts of the country.

As long ago as 18 January, on Third Reading in another place, my noble Friend Lady Byford referred to case studies where the 20-year use rule—for example, simply for walking dogs—had been employed by activists opposed to housing proposals to enforce the registration as a village green of land that few reasonable people would consider as such. Lord Bach responded:

"I agree with everything that the noble Baroness has just said. Perhaps I may say to the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, that we will study the details of her remarks and that I shall write to her."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 18 January 2006; Vol. 677, c. 686.]

I understand that no response has yet been received by Lady Byford. Perhaps tonight the Minister will take the opportunity to elaborate on behalf of his noble Friend.

It seems that such housing developments are not isolated cases. My hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) is dealing with a similar case in his constituency where a small number of local individuals opposed to the development of a health village on reclamation land proved that they had used the land for lawful pastimes for 20 years, thus qualifying it to be registered as a town green. Fortunately, the court ruled against the application for registration and building work restarted, but there is concern that the Bill could allow the case to be reopened, which would further delay the building of that much-needed community facility. Will the Government consider how to address that issue? Can the Minister tell us whether the Department has made any assessment of the amount of land eligible under the 20-year rule?

In addition to that, the creation and registration of rights will apply only to those commons registered under the 1965 Act, through Natural England and the CCW. To gain such rights, commons associations set up outside that Act and voluntary commons associations will be required to register under the Bill, which will be a time-consuming and costly process. Will the Minister tell the House how many commons associations outside the Act there are, and will he assure us that the advantages of registering outweigh the monetary cost of registration and the administrative burden that will fall on those associations? Would not it be more suitable to allow existing voluntary commons associations to remain operating as they are, while becoming part of a larger statutory organisation? Such an umbrella structure could provide democratic discussion and ruling at local level, with a more central administrative control. Moreover, it would create a better national framework for sharing information and promoting good advice. Have the Government considered a point of contact in DEFRA or another part of the Government so that the various commons associations have a central database? I do not mean a literal database, but somebody with the knowledge to provide advice and co-ordination, and develop expertise within the Department and deliver it to all the commons associations. There seems to be general agreement that the 1965 Act has not been entirely successful. I wonder whether the Minister can tell the House exactly how many commons and green are still in dispute. Do we know what are the chief disputes?

On the Government's plans to establish electronic registers, I welcome the Minister's commitment to provide funding. I hope that another Department's funding is not cut accordingly, which is, of course, what usually happens on such occasions. Nevertheless, I am somewhat concerned about the establishment of an electronic register, given the Department's track record. We only have to go back a few years to the cattle tracing scheme that was introduced following the 2001 outbreak of foot and mouth disease or the mapping exercise following the CROW Act—the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000—to find that problems surround such schemes. Of course, none of us needs reminding of the current debacle at the Rural Payments Agency. So I hope that the Minister can tell the House how much the proposed commons register will cost to establish and maintain. Will he assure us that the scheme will be more successful than the Department's previous computer projects?

In England, the commons registration authorities are largely county councils, with some district councils and unitary authorities. Do the Government know whether councils and authorities have adequate staff, with the necessary qualifications and experience; or will recruitment and training be required? That issue is one not just of funding, but of having competent staff.

The objective of part 2 is to enable the appropriate national authority to establish commons associations, thus enabling commoners to work together to manage agricultural activities and vegetation on a voluntary basis. The Bill will allow commons associations to enter into agri-environmental schemes, which, of course, we welcome. However, it is essential that such associations truly represent those with interests in the common. I listened with interest to the exchanges on the matter that the Minister had with Members on both sides of the House. It is important that such organisations are formed not just of a small group of people who can create an association to exercise power over others, possibly to their detriment. I hope that the Minister can tell the House a little more about the composition of associations and particularly whether a minimum level of support will be needed to establish a commons association.

Moreover, what will be the relationship between such commons associations and those who may have leased other rights from the landowner? The Minister made the perfectly proper point that most commons are privately owned. The owner may well have leased other rights, such as sporting rights, to third parties. What will be the relationship between the holders of such rights and a commons association? Obviously, the association's role may well impinge on the holder of sporting rights and, of course, vice versa.

Part 3, which deals with protection of commons from unlawful works, is entirely welcome, as the Minister implied. Of course, such works can include building or the erection of fences on common land. Of course in many areas, such as my constituency, they can involve the incursion of unlawful Traveller encampments. So measures to protect common land from such works and to speed the process are, of course, welcome, but I am concerned about whether the minimum additional regulatory burden will be placed on the commoners who want to achieve that aim. The Minister said that the Government plan to introduce exemptions from the necessary consent process, but I should be grateful if the Minister gave us a little more information. In particular, what will happen if the owner of rights wishes to erect temporary fencing, perhaps to reintroduce grazing on a common or to keep stock out of an especially sensitive part of a common?

Open commons with roads going through them—I have examples in my constituency—were fine when there was a small amount of fairly slow-moving traffic, but there is a problem given the increasing amount of traffic nowadays. People can stand on some of our commons and watch cars and motor bikes going through at 50 mph plus—perhaps they should not travel at that speed, but they do—and many people will not risk either their stock or the likelihood of a legal case by allowing their stock to cross open roads. Fencing is becoming more and more important. I hope that the Government will consider either an exemption or some sort of fast-tracking of inconsequential works so that only the more significant proposals have to go through the full process.

Finally, I am concerned that, yet again, in the Bill Ministers are taking immense powers to repeal other legislation—in this case, under clauses 36 and 44. In particular, the National Trust has raised the issue that its own Acts could be repealed or amended by virtue of a Minister giving commons associations powers that supersede those of the National Trust. I know that the Minister is aware of that important issue and I hope that he will reconsider it in Committee.

As I have said, and as I am sure will come through in the debate, there is clearly broad support for the Bill. The Conservatives strongly support it, but there is scope for improvement. Like the Minister, I pay tribute to the immense work done in the other place, but there are still a few things to resolve and there is still some clarity to be achieved. My experience of the Minister who will take the Bill through Committee is that he is open to good suggestions and sensible ideas and I look forward to that consideration and to making improvements to some of the areas that I have touched on. I welcome the Bill. It is a sensible measure that brings commons legislation up to date and improves some of the shortcomings of the previous legislation. I regret that it does not improve all of them, but we will seek to amend it in Committee.

It is already clear that we are talking about an area of the law and of policy that is archaic, highly technical and very complicated. The Bill is a useful vehicle to take the discussion forward. It has been a long time coming and there has been a lot of background work on it.

The Bill is important in two significant ways. First, it helps the Government to meet their own target of getting 95 per cent. of sites of special scientific interest in a favourable condition by 2010. That is an important aim in itself. It is particularly important in relation to national parks. For example, a third of England's common land is in Cumbria and the Lake district has a high density of village greens. Secondly, the Bill facilitates common structures and organisational changes. Common holders can come together on a statutory basis to bring about change and apply for agri-environment benefits.

I am not entirely sure whether those processes—those organisational changes in the Bill—will be a driver for change as much as the new agri-environment schemes will be. The way in which we pay our farmers is changing significantly. The importance of mid-term review and the switch from payments for subsidies on production to payments for public good has been undervalued and under-recognised. However, the trend seen in the changes will continue. It seems inevitable to me that a fixed common agricultural policy budget, new accession states and a review of the CAP, which is promised for 2008, will bring about a major change in the way in which we support and pay farmers. If we are moving in that direction, and that is the right direction, we need to ensure that all new legislation—the Bill included—takes account of the wider public benefit and not just the private benefit to farmers and landowners.

As I said, this is a highly technical Bill and I pay credit to the Minister's officials, who have worked extremely hard on it. Throughout the country, there is recognition of the way in which the Bill team and officials have gone out and listened to different views and tried to find consensus, which has not always been easy. This is a good example of a Bill that has been improved because the Department was prepared to listen to views in the field. As has been said, the Bill was subject to substantial scrutiny in the other place. A great deal of expertise has been brought to bear on it and many amendments were made. Nevertheless, the Bill should have been published in draft and subject to pre-legislative scrutiny, as it is an ambitious task to introduce it and make changes during its progress through Parliament. I accept the Minister's desire to make progress and take an available legislative slot, but if ever a Bill needed detailed scrutiny, this is such a measure.

The hon. Gentleman has made a valid point, as a labyrinth of legal measures surrounds the issue. Putney and Wimbledon commons in my constituency are covered by measures on urban commons introduced in 1925. We must be careful that we understand all the Bill's ramifications, so he has made a very good point.

Let me make a confession. I am not sure that I understand all the Bill's ramifications, but I have learned rapidly and I expect that a number of issues will be discussed in Committee, as the Minister suggested. It is a fundamental principle of mine, however, that complicated, technical Bills should be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny. I accept that Ministers in the Department wanted to take advantage of the opportunity offered by an unforeseen legislative slot, but that is not necessarily the best way forward.

I agree, but is the hon. Gentleman surprised that the programme motion says that proceedings on the Bill must be completed by next Thursday?

I am surprised but, as I hope to serve in Committee, I am pleased as well. I am confident that a range of issues need to be probed and scrutinised in Committee, and we have already heard examples of such issues on Second Reading.

The hon. Gentleman leads me on to the royal commission report that was published in 1958 and eventually led to the introduction of the Commons Registration Act 1965. That was the first leg of work after the royal commission report. The second leg was the CROW Act, which provided rights of access over common land. The Bill is the third leg: it is right to concentrate on management and biodiversity, but it has taken us almost 50 years since the royal commission report to complete the legislative process.

I am particularly keen on clause 15, which has been discussed this evening. I want to see more village greens. We are currently awaiting a judgment from the Lords on the Trap Grounds case, which has cast the law into turmoil. If people make an application after usage for a number of years, it is not acceptable for the land owner, on learning of that application, to stop it because they object to it. However, the Court of Appeal decided that it was acceptable, so I am delighted that the Bill overcomes that hurdle. Village greens are important for a range of recreational and social reasons.

I am particularly keen to have a village green at Keenwell in Calverton. Local people have come together and submitted an application to create a new village green in an area that has been used informally for more than 20 years. The site has historical connections, but it needs to be improved, and there are plans in Calverton to try to do so. That site is next to Dark lane—an evocative name and a traditional right of way through to the south of the village. There are plans to develop the western side of Dark lane for housing and to bring an access road through Keenwell. Clearly, different interests are at play here, but it is important that when an area has been in legitimate use over many years, applications to develop it should be considered very carefully. No planning application has yet been made in respect of Dark lane. I hope that Gedling borough council, which has to deal with the application, will wait for the outcome of the application for village green status at Keenwell. I have met the council and it is familiar with the argument: I hope that it will wait for the legislation to come through and then make a balanced consideration about the need for housing as against the need to enhance the environment in Calverton.

People feel strongly about their recreational spaces and their common land. In the city of Nottingham, people really appreciate the 130 acres of allotted recreation grounds. They have been laid out in three miles of public walks and five public parks or recreation grounds. Mrs. June Perry has corresponded with the Department about the issue. She wanted to know the status of allotted recreation grounds and wrote to the Department in February. Unfortunately, she has received no response, but she wants to see the allotted recreation grounds on the commons register. She says in her letter:

"It seems to me to be a strange anomaly that Allotted Recreation Grounds, which have been covered by all the Commons Acts since 1845, have not been placed automatically on the Register of Commons and Town and Village Greens."

She goes on to acknowledge that it is a complicated area, but she suggests that

"all that is needed to register an Allotted Recreation Ground should be authenticated copies of the relevant parts of the original documents."

By mentioning Mrs. Perry and her desire and drive to improve recreation and informal spaces right in the centre of Nottingham, I hope that we will be able to make some progress on the case that she makes.

At the heart of the Bill, as we have already heard, is the notion of commons associations. I hope that they will provide a real mechanism to manage and improve common land. Some already exist in a voluntary form. It is vital, however, not just to pass the legislation and put the process in place, but to go out and promote the commons associations. It has already been suggested that, because of costs and administrative burdens, some voluntary associations will be reluctant to make that step change. It is easy for us to pass legislation without fully considering the steps necessary to create the new commons associations. It is relatively easy to see how large commons could be managed this way, but many of our commons are small and fragmented pieces of land and the new sort of association does not fit so easily there. There has been talk of joining up these pieces of common land, perhaps on a county basis, but unless there is real commitment from the people involved in those land holdings, that may be difficult to achieve. The issue requires further thought and consideration.

Assuming that support and finance for the new commons associations is available, one of the key issues to consider, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) has already said, is who should be on them. Should it just be the commoners, or are there other bodies that can bring expertise to the association—for example, the National Trust and the national parks have got a lot of resources? If we are offering finance and support, we must bear in mind the need to deliver wider public goods and, possibly, to involve other stakeholders in the association.

I assume that the term, "member", in clause 30 includes all registered commoners. If a new association is set up, it seems to me that all commoners with grazing rights should be part of it. The Minister has already alluded to the provision in clause 30 on elections to the association, and perhaps he will bring us up to speed with the thinking on what membership of an association means either in his reply or in Committee. He will also be aware of the suggestion that statutory commons associations might better be termed statutory commons committees in order to distinguish them from existing bodies.

This is a good Bill, but it could be improved and strengthened. I accept that it should be possible to deregister commons, but I am concerned about the provision in clause 16 that it may not be necessary to exchange comparative land for commons of less than 200 sq m. Many commons are small, and, they will be eaten away piecemeal unless we are careful. Again, I look forward to the debate on replacing deregistered common land on small commons.

As the Minister has said, clause 45 deals with the powers of local authorities, which are permissive powers rather than duties. There has been some discussion in the Chamber this evening whether local authorities have got the resources to pursue such matters, and I suspect that issues connected with common land will be relatively low on the agenda for many hard-pressed local authorities. Some commons have no record of ownership, and there is a strong case to argue, as the royal commission has done, that local authorities should have the power to have that land vested in them, so that they can make the necessary improvements.

A survey of commons has been undertaken in my area, Nottinghamshire, and it found that many of them are fragmented and piecemeal. Of the 74 commons surveyed, 11 are totally encroached upon, eight are partially encroached upon and seven are neglected, which reinforces the case for local authorities to take common land, to have it vested in them and to improve it.

My hon. Friend has discussed the wonderful notion of devolution to the appropriate authority, which surely includes a role for parish and town councils rather than district and country councils. Does he agree that parish and town councils are likely to have the greatest interest vested in them, because such matters are germane to their immediate localities?

I certainly agree with that. I believe that the local environment is extremely important to local people and that the more we can localise decision making around relatively small pieces of land, the more issues can be identified and resolved. I very much look forward to town and parish councils having greater responsibilities and powers.

I want to return to a matter on which I intervened on the Minister earlier—the cut-off date of 28 June 2005 for unlawful works. I am delighted to be told that that does not apply to local authorities. However, I know from direct experience that large areas of land where the public have a right to roam freely under the CROW Act are fenced off. I seek assurances that the 28 June cut-off date will not prevent action on that. It would be a travesty if the monumental piece of legislation that delivered the right to roam were to be frustrated.

On making an application to a county court as regards obstruction, I am not entirely clear what powers the court will have. I presume that if the order is not complied with, there can be a reapplication for a breach. Under rights of way legislation, magistrates courts have the power to fine. Highways authorities now have the opportunity to come and remove obstructions. What are the powers of the county court if unlawful restrictions are not removed?

I think that I can help the hon. Gentleman. A court would have an inherent power to apply a fine and/or to imprison for a breach of its own order.

I am grateful for that advice and look forward to the Minister making the Government's position clearer.

I am conscious that I have highlighted a whole range of aspects of the Bill that can be strengthened and improved, but I want to reinforce the fact that it is a good piece of legislation that builds on the royal commission's work, with registration, access, and now biodiversity.

There is a view in the countryside that the countryside should never change—that it should be preserved in aspic. That cannot be right. The countryside needs to change to survive. A changing, working countryside is a healthy countryside. I am pleased that the Bill is a piece of revising legislation that will enable change to take place. What is important for the countryside is not that change should take place, but the scope, scale and timetable of that change.

At this stage in a debate on agricultural matters, I usually draw the House's attention to my entry in the Register of Members' Interests. On this occasion, I do not believe that I have an interest to declare. Having scrutinised the register of common rights, I can find no mention of the dominant tenement that I occupy. I therefore presume that I have no common rights—nor, as I understand it, am I likely to be able to acquire new common rights under the Bill.

Commons are a relic of the old manorial system of land tenure. It is not surprising that it is a complex subject, because the history goes back a very long way and people have huge attachment to their common rights and to any commons on which they exercise them.

Liberal Democrats will support the Bill because we believe that town and village greens are important for the communities in which they are situated and provide them with opportunities to exercise and to enjoy pastimes. Unfortunately, such greens are often encroached upon. We welcome the powers in the Bill to ensure that that does not continue. We recognise the importance of commons, particularly to agriculture and to remote farming communities whose common rights are the backbone of their business. Without those rights, the business would often not survive. Commoners are fiercely possessive of their rights and their commons, and know them well. In many families those rights go back generations and the attachment is great.

Because of the huge size of commons, many of the activities that take place there are co-operative. Farmers come together to gather sheep or to shepherd, which builds up a feeling of community and togetherness. In Wales, as I am sure the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) will agree, the Welsh language is an important part of those activities and contributes to the feeling of being Welsh and being part of the agricultural community.

It has been pointed out that commons represent a not insignificant amount of land in both England and Wales—about 3 per cent. in England and 8 per cent. in Wales. It is important for us to understand how that land is to be managed and how it can be best organised for the benefit of the people who have rights and ownership. Of the 540,000 hectares of common land in England and Wales, almost 70,000 hectares are situated in Brecon and Radnorshire, so in my constituency I have about 12 per cent. of all the common land in England and Wales.

When I spent an interesting couple of years as chairman of the Brecon Beacons national park, I got to know commoners and their common land well. One issue that is often raised is overgrazing. I know areas where overgrazing takes place, but it is not to the benefit of anybody. It is not beneficial to farmers, whose stock does not flourish, or to biodiversity, to the appearance of the landscape or to the people who want to enjoy it for recreational purposes. A far bigger danger will be undergrazing, particularly as a result of the reform of the common agricultural policy. I hope that one outcome of the Bill will be the development of management techniques to overcome undergrazing, which threatens our common land. Common land is important for agriculture, recreation, nature conservation, landscape and archaeology. The Bill provides a way forward for management plans to protect all those aspects.

There are one or two omissions from the Bill. We are disappointed that the commons commissioners are abolished by the Bill. They did excellent work following the Commons Registration Act 1965, and although there has been criticism of that Act and of some of the inaccuracies and associated difficulties, much good work was done and the commissioners became proficient and knowledgeable about commons and the related legislation.

I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman's comments and I appeared many times in tribunals. The main flaw of the 1965 Act is that, when mistakes were made, it was a devil of a job to rectify them without, for example, an application to the High Court, which was beyond most people's means.

Indeed. As the hon. Gentleman says, the main difficulty was to rectify mistakes. That was a complaint not about the commissioners, who were implementing the legislation, but about the legislation itself. The Bill will ensure that some matters, such as severance, attachment, creation and variation, can be addressed by commons registration authorities. I am not clear how those issues will be determined, mostly by county councils, but in some cases by district councils, and in Wales by unitary authorities. Does the Minister anticipate that decisions will be taken by officers of the authority or by elected members, or will there always have to be an independent inquiry to determine applications, to give both applicants and objectors confidence that the process is conducted in an entirely appropriate manner?

If there are to be numerous local inquiries, we will need a body of people who have the necessary commitment and expertise to decide those matters. When statutory commons associations are set up, the Bill provides that, if there is an objection, there should be a local inquiry. My noble Friends in the other place suggested the creation of commons inspectors for that purpose. It seems that there will be considerable work for them to do.

There is no reference in the Bill to the huge contribution that commons could make to food production. Last week, the Government's chief scientific adviser, David King, warned that an increase of 3° C in global temperature could mean that 400 million would go hungry. The present Government have been more cavalier in their disregard for food security than almost any British Government for the past 100 years. In the 1920s and 1930s, Governments believed that we could raid the global larder, so to speak, and buy food from wherever we wanted to satisfy our needs. That was confounded by the second world war and the destruction of shipping.

Town and village greens were dug up and turned into allotments in the "Dig for Victory" campaigns, and the commons were ploughed, especially in our area, where Llandefalle common and Hay Bluff were ploughed up to provide potatoes and corn for the country. In an emergency, that might have to happen again. Such activities took place under emergency powers during the war, and perhaps the Bill should provide for such a possibility in future.

We welcome the opportunity to rectify some mistakes that were made under the previous registration system, but we are concerned about the provisions for common land to be exchanged—for instance, when it is compulsorily purchased for road building. The land for which it is exchanged should be contiguous with the original common. Commoners often complain that the land for which it is exchanged is so remote from the existing common or is divided from the common by a fenced main road that it is of little use to the commoners for stock grazing.

The most important aspect of the Bill is the powers given to national authorities to set up statutory commons associations. We welcome that, because in many cases commons have been unable to make use of grants through environmental schemes, as it has not been possible to get the agreement of every commoner on that common. However, the Bill is unclear about who might initiate the formation of a statutory commons association. I presume that it could be the people with common rights, local authorities, national authorities or organisations with interests in conservation. Will the Minister state whom he believes will initiate the process? Given commoners' sensitivity, the method of electing commoners' representatives to the associations' management boards could be a difficult matter.

The Bill mentions elections. Would inactive graziers have the same rights as active graziers? If a dominant tenement was owned by a sole trader, would that constitute one vote? If it was owned by a partnership, would that constitute two votes? If one person had more than one dominant tenement on a common, would there be a vote for each dominant tenement? Would the size of the vote vary with that of the registration? For example, would someone who was registered for 100 sheep have fewer votes than someone who was registered for 5,000? The Minister would be well advised to resolve the matter before the Bill becomes law because establishing statutory commons associations could flounder on it.

If statutory commons associations have the power to order the management of commons, and it meant a reduction of commoners' rights in order to comply with a specific environmental scheme, that might be all right for commoners who agreed with entry into the scheme, but if an individual commoner did not agree, what would be the effect on his human rights of the reduction of his grazing rights without his agreement? The Bill does not mention that human rights aspect. Will the Minister comment on that?

We welcome the protection of village and town greens and commons. The repeal of the Law of Property Act 1925 is a good step forward. However, several commoners complain to me that planning authorities give planning permission for developments on commons without informing the applicants that they should have applied under the 1925 legislation. When planning authorities receive planning applications for a common, they should be required to inform the national authority, or possibly to put a condition precedent on the planning permission, if it is issued, requiring the applicant to make the proper application to the national authority. If the planning permission is granted, it could mean injustice for those who value the common or the green. It would be much better if the Bill included a process to ensure that applicants made a proper approach to the national authority.

I agree with the comments of the hon. Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) on requiring a person who is responsible for illegal developments on commons simply to take down or remove the development is an insufficient punishment. People should be deterred from taking illegal action by some sort of penalty, if appropriate. I bow to the legal knowledge of the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy on that. The point has been made to me on several occasions.

The Bill is welcome but it has taken a long time to arrive. The 1965 Act gave us registration and we were told that the second tranche would quickly follow. It is 35 years late, but welcome, although much damage has been done.

Forty-one years.

I allowed six years to achieve the registration—I believed that that was a reasonable time. However, thirty-five years later, we have no way of ensuring that commons are managed properly. Much of the damage to the sites of special scientific interest has been done in that time.

Although we support the Bill, we shall make suggestions in Committee about ways in which it can be improved so that commoners can be engaged more fully and have the confidence that their interests will be taken into account and that the commons that they have loved and on which they have worked for so long will not be taken over by somebody with a different vision from theirs. In most cases—I would say 90 per cent.—the commoners' interests encompass not only agriculture but conservation. We want to encourage sensible commoners who are committed to that work to have the opportunity to do it.

I appreciate that Second Reading debates are supposed to take a panoramic view of proposed legislation, and I shall therefore begin by saying that I welcome all the Bill's provisions.

However, I make no apology for now becoming more specific and parochial. I want to examine whether the Bill will assist with town green applications that have already been submitted, as well as those to be made in future. I shall concentrate on an application for an area called Yeadon Banks in my constituency. If applications such as the Yeadon Banks proposal for registration are successful, they will benefit from the range of measures in the Bill.

Yeadon Banks comprises three fields in the town of Yeadon in my constituency. Leeds city council owns two and the other is in private ownership. Local people greatly value the area, for the reasons that other hon. Members have cited when considering commons. Until the 1990s the whole of Yeadon Banks was in the green belt. Then came the Conservative Government's lengthy, byzantine and expensive unitary development plan process. There was no problem with the two city council-owned fields remaining in the green belt. However, at the public inquiry into the unitary development plan, the owners of the private field successfully appealed against their field remaining in the green belt. It therefore became a protected area of search. That meant that the field would be reconsidered for possible housing development when the UDP came up for review.

The review took place from the end of 2004 to early 2005. The owners of the field were unsuccessful in their appeal to have the land designated for housing, so it remained a protected area of search. Its future is therefore uncertain. The people of Yeadon want to retain that cherished area of green space. The idea that it should be buried under bricks and mortar for the simple pursuit of profit by developers is repugnant to them. Is it such a bad thing for communities, such as Yeadon in my constituency, to attempt to use the registration process to protect a valuable green jewel from the developers' bulldozers? That is the background to the application.

After the original removal of the land from the green belt, local residents and I explored the possibility of getting the whole of Yeadon Banks—all three fields—designated as a town green. It appeared to fulfil the criteria. It had been used for generations—indeed, throughout living memory—for various relevant recreational purposes. No one can remember any "Keep Out" signs or other restrictions on public access. No one had been challenged or given express permission to use the area. Local people had used it, to all intents and purposes, as of right, without force, without secrecy and without permission—to cite the legal jargon.

I have worked closely with local residents on this issue, and following several well-attended public meetings we formed a community group called Keep Yeadon Banks Green—or KEYBAG, as it came to be known. With assistance from the Open Spaces Society, and in particular its esteemed local legal adviser, Jerry Pearlman, we began to put together an application for designation.

At this point, I must pay tribute to the chair of KEYBAG, Doug Jones. He has been tireless in his work, and played a huge role in collecting statements of evidence from residents, drawing up maps and filling in application forms. He has done all this while caring for his seriously ill wife and suffering from a protracted period of ill health himself. He is truly a local hero. This is relevant not because I want to eulogise Doug, but because I want to touch on some of the points that have already been raised in the debate. The work involved in the application has fallen on a few volunteers, and it is much more time-consuming than anyone might assume, especially if significant numbers of statements of evidence need to be collected in order to put forward the most cogent possible application for designation.

There are immense legal complexities involved. They are not quite beyond the lay person, but they are incredibly arcane and we have needed time and assistance to get to grips with them. For that reason, among others, I would ask my hon. Friend the Minister to reject the advice of those who seek to restrict the limits relating to land being closed off to the community and applications being submitted. That is the other side of the coin to that described by my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt) and by the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice).

Eventually, in July 2004, Doug and I had the pleasure of presenting our application to the council. We had no illusions about the difficulties involved. We realised that many applications fail, for any number of reasons. However, we did not expect our application to run aground as a result of the so-called Trap Grounds Appeal Court judgment of February 2005. That judgment effectively gives landowners an absolute block on applications for town greens. All they have to do is erect fences and "Keep Out" signs between the date of the application being submitted and the day on which the case is heard, as has been done on Yeadon Banks and in many other locations throughout the country. Under the Trap Grounds judgment, terminating access in that way before an application is heard automatically defeats it. That is obviously nonsense, and is clearly completely contrary to the intention of the Commons Registration Act 1965.

The community was devastated by that action by the landowners. I would not go so far as to say that the residents of Yeadon took to the streets, but many were moved to demonstrate in palpable terms what they thought of the landowners, the fences and the "Keep Out" signs. It felt a bit like the local team getting to the cup final, only to turn up at the ground and find that the gates had been locked and that someone had put up "Keep Out" signs and threatened that if the players insisted on playing the game, victory would be awarded to the other side. This is why clause 15 is so welcome to so many communities throughout the country, not just to those living in the vicinity of Yeadon Banks. It will not make applications any stronger, but it will give applicants something approaching a level playing field, and the ability to have the evidence properly weighed.

I am delighted that the Government have taken this initiative. They could have waited for the outcome of the appeal to the Lords on the Trap Grounds case that was heard at the end of last month. They could also have considered making regulations under the existing legislation. However, they have seized the issue and recognised the legal loophole—the black hole, as I would call it—and are tackling the matter with primary legislation that I hope will restore the status quo.

I realise that my hon. Friend the Minister cannot comment on individual applications, for a whole host of reasons. My purpose is simply to flag up the issue of applications that were left in limbo by the Trap Grounds judgment, including that involving Yeadon Banks. There are a number of scenarios for applications in that state of limbo. Rather than rehearsing them now, as my hon. Friend has not had an adequate opportunity to seek advice that would enable him to respond in a considered way, I should like to meet him and his officials at the earliest opportunity to discuss them. I would welcome a commitment from him that he is prepared to do that.

I should like to say to the hon. Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell) that one of the problems involved in using the town green method of trying to obstruct or prevent a development on a particular site is that more and more landowners who have allowed a certain amount of informal use of a piece of waste land will be far more reluctant to do so. One of the reasons why we have a planning process is precisely to deal with such situations. I appreciate that he has a problem in his constituency—we all have problems from time to time—but he should be very careful about encouraging people to use the town green clause, as it were, as a way of blocking a planning development. In the north, such developments often involve much-needed social housing.

The hon. Gentleman uses loaded words such as "obstruct", but the people of Yeadon Banks and their counterparts up and down the country would not recognise that concept. They would use the word "protect", because they are trying to protect a facility, an open space, that people have been using for generations.

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says. No doubt his constituents will read about his remarks in their local paper with great interest.

The Bill has proceeded through the other place, including its Committee stage there, to this House with a great deal of consensus. The Minister has been very willing to listen to all our remarks as he deals with this nightmarishly complex piece of legislation. It is sad, therefore, that having gone through all this, we are now faced with an outrageous programme motion. We know perfectly well that some amendments will need to be tabled in Committee. How on earth can the Committee deal with these complex matters by Thursday 27 April? That is an outrageous abuse of the programming system.

Before the programming system was introduced, the Opposition had the weapon of delay to wring concessions from the Government. This Bill would have provided a wonderful opportunity to prolong debate to win a number of concessions. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns), who is sitting on our Front Bench, was, in his day, a great master of speaking long and hard on certain issues in order to get concessions out of the Government. Given the provisions of the Bill, we could have spent at least an hour on turbary, a further hour on estovers and possibly even more on couchancy—although I am not sure whether my Norman French pronunciation is quite correct there. The Bill would have provided wonderful opportunities for delay, as well as for those who are interested in the arcane areas of common land law.

I wonder why the hon. Gentleman has left out rights of pescary.

That was remiss of me. That subject could also have taken up a fair amount of time in Committee. These are much-loved common rights that date back to the Norman conquest.

My hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) mentioned the first commons Act, which was passed in the reign of Edward I in 1285. That must be one of the oldest Acts of Parliament remaining on the statute book, and if this Bill passes into law it will abolish it, so I want to pay a passing tribute to that old piece of legislation. My hon. Friend was right to say that the problems in 1285 were very similar to those that exist today, with which the Bill is trying to deal. The Act of 1285 says that there was concern among those who owned the common land and put up hedges or dug ditches that

"some by Night, or at another Season, when they suppose not to be espied, do overthrow the Hedge or Dyke".

In those days, too, landowners were worried about vandalism to their property, and the Act was introduced, in part, to deal with that.

I hope that the Bill will be more successful than the previous legislation on these matters. There is no doubt that some of the unintended consequences that have flowed from previous legislation—not least the Law of Property Act 1922, which abolished the old feudal right of copyhold—are the reason why we are debating this Bill tonight. That was an important right, because it meant that all those with common rights over a piece of ground were listed in the manorial roll. They also had a copy of that manorial roll, which enabled people to know exactly who was entitled to what common rights. That was abolished, and considerable doubt has existed ever since about who owns particular rights in relation to particular commons.

As we have heard, the 1965 Act left a lot of doubt about the ownership of commons and common rights, and the amount of grazing rights that various commoners had. As a result of the 1965 Act, many rights that were unclear and had been more or less lost in the mists of time were hopelessly exaggerated, and many more farmers than were entitled to do so claimed the right to graze sheep on a piece of land. That is reflected now in the single farm payment, which is based on historic rights. If those historic rights were based on the wrong figures, either accidentally or deliberately, other farmers on the common might not get the payment to which they were entitled, and the money might go to another farmer who might not be entitled to it.

Despite what I have said, I welcome the Bill, as it will make a difference and clear up several anomalies, not least in my constituency. In one case in my constituency, somebody's drive was apparently listed as common land a number of years ago. In another, somebody had bought an existing house that apparently, unknown to anybody, was built on common land—at the time of the registration in 1965, no one noticed that so there was no appeal against it. Of course there was no way in which the couple living in that house could unlock themselves from the situation. I hope that the Bill will at least resolve that problem.

There is no doubt that there are many problems with commons. As my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire said, the nature of those problems depends on where one comes from. In commons in the south of England, under-grazing has often been the problem. Having lived for many years in East Anglia, I know that some of its commons have become completely overgrown because nobody there grazes sheep any more, or cuts bracken for bedding. Commons in the north, however, such as some of the big north Pennines commons in my constituency, have been over-grazed. If one looks at the landscape, one sees that where there is a moor that is managed for grouse, a fence, and then a moor that is not managed for grouse, there is purple heather on one side of the fence and white grass on the other. That is a stark example of how over-grazing can cause deterioration in management. I do not know whether that will continue. We have not yet seen the full effects of the single farm payment, but now that subsidies are not production-driven, there seems to be a tendency towards under-grazing on some upland commons. People will take cattle off those upland commons, and grazing cattle and sheep is important in maintaining proper biodiversity.

The Minister should also address the management of commons in any amendments about erecting and taking down fences. One of the difficulties is that when many flocks were slaughtered during the foot and mouth epidemic in my constituency and other areas in the north, hefted flocks were destroyed—flocks that have lived on a particular piece of ground for generations. That ground has been repopulated with new sheep, which do not have the tradition of hefting. Those sheep wander all over the place.

For example, on Allendale common, one of the biggest commons in my constituency of well over 20 square miles, the commoners—or stintholders, as they are called—put up a 3 km fence to manage the movement of sheep better, because some individual sheep were travelling 20 or 30 miles from where they should have been. Farmers were driving up and down collecting odd sheep that had turned up as far away as Weardale over the border into Durham. They have now been told to take the fence down, as they did not have the correct permission to erect it on common land. That is an example of how unsympathetic officialdom can make life difficult for commoners.

On the point made by the hon. Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) about access, the fact that there is a fence does not mean that there is not access. It simply means that people must go through a gate or climb over a stile. In view of the changing circumstances of management, fences should be allowed without the long protracted process of consent, which can cause considerable expense and waste a great deal of time. A more sympathetic form of management would make an important contribution.

In the handling of severance of common rights and the reallocation of rights, commons associations should have greater flexibility than the Bill allows them. In different scenarios on different commons, severance of rights can be important, but reallocation of rights should not necessarily be on the pro rata basis stipulated in the Bill. No doubt the Minister has read the explanatory memorandum on the subject.

indicated assent.

Of course he has. The official who wrote the explanatory memorandum deserves credit, as it is a clear and interesting document. It gives an example of a piece of one farm being sold off for housing development—not on common land but where the owners had rights to graze on common land—which could have ended up, had the rights been halved, with one farmer having 50 per cent. of the grazing rights, and 50 individual house plots having the grazing right of, say, one sheep each. Of course those householders will never exercise that right, which will remove sheep from the area. If the commons association could intervene, it could award the 50 grazing units given to new householders to the farmer or other farmers who had access to the common, so that the grazing regime could be properly maintained.

When I have inquired in the past what the balance should be between commoners, stintholders, farmers or other interests on the commons association, I have been told, as the Minister of State said earlier, that he had no scenario in mind for who should be in the majority. One can imagine a conflict between the owner of a grouse moor, the leaseholder of the shooting rights and those interested in nature conservation. Those issues can be difficult, and it is important that commons associations know exactly where the priorities lie. The composition of commons associations is a recipe for considerable conflict of interest.

I want to reinforce the concerns expressed by the National Trust, because an important point of principle arises. I understand that many commons are subject to different and various Acts of Parliament, and that we need to be able to change those without the scrutiny of the House. However, the National Trust owns a huge amount of common land—about 10 per cent. of the total in England and Wales—and for the National Trust Act 1971 to be amended by regulation in relation to commons associations is wrong. The National Trust Act should not be changed without proper scrutiny by the House.

I am sad to end on the sour note that there will not be proper time to debate the Bill in Committee. Apart from that, however, I welcome the Bill, and I am grateful to the Minister for listening to representations previously made to him.

I am delighted to take part in the debate on Second Reading. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) on bringing a slight note of disagreement to the proceedings. So far, there has been a rather mushy compromise, with a level of consensus that perhaps this place does well to achieve on occasions. I want to take a slightly more robust approach to the defence of our commons, which matter to me.

I am in the fortuitous position of having a large number of commons in my constituency. My hon. Friend the Minister of State mentioned one of them in his opening remarks—Minchinhampton, about which he spoke in glowing terms. He referred to biodiversity and people coming from Gloucester and Stroud to visit it. I thought that we would hear about the warm beer and the maids riding to church, so glowing were his comments.

Commons and common land are not exempt from controversy, however. I think that it behoves those of us who look at history to bear in mind the basis on which land has been allotted, and also the fact that, for what I consider to be dishonourable reasons, there has been an attempt to brush it under the carpet rather than defending it. It is deeply ironic that the other place spent five days in a Grand Committee and two days on Second Reading, Report and Third Reading—stages that we will no doubt handle as well—given that the predecessors of those peers stole common land from people. It is wonderful that the other place can spend all that time on detailed consideration, but some of us feel that the Commons, which contains the representatives of the commoners, is the place that should uphold the right of every person to have access to the land and use it purposefully.

rose—

I am sure that my hon. Friend has something enthusiastic to say.

Is it not somewhat ironic that those peers of bygone times have been replaced by peers of modern times who, instead of stealing land from the people, steal state schools from the people for a pittance of £2 million?

Order. The hon. Gentleman might want to rethink what he has just said.

I will not go down that path, Madam Deputy Speaker, although I am sure it would be interesting. I will, however, take my hon. Friend back to the age of the Diggers and the Levellers. The Diggers in particular fought to maintain common land. In those days, in the mid-17th century, three fifths of land was common land; now the proportion is 3 per cent. The remaining land has gone somewhere. In fact, it has gone into private ownership—and 80 per cent. of the 3 per cent. is now privately owned. We are hardly talking about the legacy that many of us would like to see, involving rights of access and use. The maintaining and enhancing of democratic accountability has not been a great success story.

Although I supported the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, I saw no evidence that access to common land had ever been denied. I understood that people had de facto access, even if they did not have legal access. I tried to explain to farmers that people would not get off their sofas and stop watching television just to walk on common land because they had been given the legal right to do so.