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Commons Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his comments on my Amendments Nos. 28, 30 and 80, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for raising an important point, of which he also made us aware. He spoke particularly of his desire, and ours, that there should be a cut-off date. However, the Minister did not answer the question. Will commoners be able to enter agri-environment schemes if the registration authorities have not registered them, or will they bypass the system? What will happen? I thought that the whole idea was that the new agri-environment schemes would kick in straight away because payments are being altered straight away. Surely commoners cannot be without income for that length of time. With regard to my Amendment No. 80, the Minister also said that there are differing standards. Obviously some areas have been better than others at dealing with the applications, and there is a backlog. The whole thrust behind including timescales is to encourage local authorities to get on with the job. I know that the authorities are going to set up a trial area but is the Minister not concerned that, if there is no cut-off date, there is nothing in the Bill to encourage them to undertake this work as soon as possible? Surely that is what we are after with this legislation. I do not know whether the Minister wishes to add anything more to that point at this stage. When the Minister referred to Amendment No. 80, he said that regulations could apply later. Will those be regulations about which we have no say or is he referring to regulations that are already written into the Bill? I hope that the noble Lord can clarify the situation with regard to agri-environment schemes and one or two other points. As this is not Committee stage, it is difficult to ask these questions, but I do not know how else we can proceed.