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Commons Councils (Standard Constitution) (England) Regulations 2010

My Lords, I too welcome these regulations and the ability to debate them this afternoon. I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Open Spaces Society and a member of the Access, Conservation and Environment Group of the British Mountaineering Council. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, has raised several relevant questions, with which I will try not to overlap too much. I welcome the volume of information that we have been provided with this afternoon. Sometimes we get regulations which the Explanatory Memorandum simply rewrites in slightly different—and sometimes not even slightly different—words. This Explanatory Memorandum, particularly the annexes to it, provides a great deal of useful help and information. We have in front of us today the Commons Councils (Standard Constitution) (England) Regulations, a very full impact assessment—which contains a large amount of interesting and useful information—and the rather wonderful draft model orders for commons. One model order is for the West Barsetshire Commons Council—I always think of it as Borsetshire rather than Barsetshire—of which we had a previous version more than three years ago when we debated the Commons Bill. Another model order is for the Barset National Commons Council. The model orders are no doubt closely modelled on the draft proposals coming forward for the three commons councils being considered at the moment, including for the Lake District, which I think we all welcome and look forward to seeing in operation. My first general point overlaps with that of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor; that is, it seems a long time since we debated the Commons Bill as it went through this House. In fact, I think that it was before the new furniture came into the Moses Room.