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Commons Councils (Standard Constitution) (England) Regulations 2010

My Lords, I am not being clear enough and I apologise to the noble Baroness. There is a difference between the council being set up as a consensual model and how it operates afterwards, which is what the noble Baroness may be describing. Clearly the council will be in awful trouble if it wins votes by 51 to 49 and works on that principle. Nevertheless, the noble Baroness is right: in certain circumstances it will be a majority decision. However, I think she and I would agree that if there were too many votes of that kind on a consensual council, the concept of the council would be in serious trouble. There is an element of force behind what happens when someone refuses to pay. If a commoner refuses to pay a levy set by the council, it will be recovered as a civil debt and, until the debt is paid, the defaulter is excluded from being a member of the council, from voting for a member of the council and from participating in the business of the council. That is to be expected. After all, by definition, if they have withdrawn their financial support they have withdrawn their contribution and their right to participate. There is bound to be an element of compulsion in such circumstances, otherwise the concept of the council working and being able to make a levy would be a complete nonsense. If any aspect of the standard constitution—this is another point about which the noble Baroness was exercised—as set out in the draft regulations is not appropriate to a particular commons council, different provision can be made in the order establishing that council and the special provision will take precedence. We are looking for flexibility. I know that the noble Baroness could be quite fertile in identifying areas where some special dimension needed to be taken into account and, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, emphasised, we are looking for an element of flexibility in those terms. I am grateful to noble Lords for what I had anticipated would be a close examination of the nature of these orders. What I have also detected from the contributions is that we all want these commons councils to work, where they are appropriate and where there is a will to get them established. We have a framework that will make that possible, and I look forward to the progress that is made in establishing the commons councils. Motion agreed.