2 The report on the proposal
6. We made our report to the House on the proposal
for the Order on 29 November 2005. Our conclusion was that a
draft Order in the form of the proposal should be laid before
the House.[3]
7. In reporting on the proposal, we also made two
requests, one of the Forestry Commissioners themselves and another
of the Secretary of State.
8. First, we requested that the Forestry Commissioners
formally commit themselves to a policy of affordable pricing for
facilities which they or their partners develop and that the form
of future commercial partnership agreements should specifically
reflect that commitment. In response, the Commissioners have affirmed
a commitment to ensuring that there is affordable access to forestry
facilities for all members of the public.[4]
They consider that this commitment to affordability is secured
through their policy of setting charges in accordance with the
market. The Commissioners have also stated that, in entering
into arrangements for the provision of facilities with commercial
partners, it was their intention that specific provision in the
legal documentation would prevent the setting of charges at unreasonable
rates, and not beyond the level of the market. We welcome
this.
9. Secondly, we requested that the Secretary of State
should consider whether there would be merit in providing that
appeals made against restocking notices served by the Commissioners
on persons under their powers in section 17B of the Forestry Act
1967 should be heard not as now by the responsible minister, but
in the Magistrates Courts. We made this request as it seemed
to us that, where various agencies of the Crown (though not the
same person) had power to conclude that the offence of unlawful
felling had occurred, on that basis serve a compulsory restocking
notice on the person believed to have liability for remedial works,
and then to judge whether any appeal made against that notice
should be upheld, such a situation could give rise to perceptions
of inequity. Although we did not believe there was any reason
to suppose that those presently involved in the appeals process
in any way failed to discharge their responsibilities fairly,
we were concerned that if, as was intended, greater use was made
of the enforcement power once, as the draft Order provides, conviction
for unlawfully felling trees was no longer a pre-condition for
the use of that power, the public might be reassured if the power
was in the hands of the courts, rather than exercisable by government
officials or statutory office-holders (as the Forestry Commissioners
themselves are).
10. The Explanatory memorandum on the draft Order
records that the Secretary of State has considered our request
and concluded that the appeals process is used extremely rarely,
and that there is no reason to believe it would not remain a reasonable
and proportionate system in the context of the reforms which the
draft Order would introduce.[5]
However, the Secretary of State also agreed that it would be
necessary for the public to have confidence in the appeals process
and therefore that it would be appropriate to keep the operation
of the process under review and to consider additional reforms,
particularly if the number of appeals were to increase significantly.
We welcome this statement.
11. We are satisfied that the Secretary of State
has had due regard to our previous report on the proposal for
this draft Order.
3 First Report from the Regulatory Reform Committee
of session 2005-06, Proposal for the Regulatory Reform (Forestry)
Order 2006, HC 729.Copies of this report, which contains our
substantive analysis of the Order's provisions and our assessment
of how it meets the requirements of the Regulatory Reform Act,
are available to Members of Parliament from the Vote Office and
to members of the public from our webpage at:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmdereg/729/72902.htm Back
4
Explanatory memorandum on the draft Order, paragraph 52 Back
5
Explanatory memorandum, paragraphs 48-50 Back
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