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HOUSE OF COMMONS
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE
taken before the
UNOPPOSED BILL COMMITTEE
on the
BEVERLEY FREEMEN BILL [HL]
Tuesday 12 January 2010
Before:
Sylvia Heal, in the Chair
John Austin
Gordon Banks
Sir John Butterfill
Mr Robert Walter
MS ALISON GORLOV, Winckworth Sherwood, appeared
as Parliamentary Agent.
MR ROB MANSELL, Solicitor, East Riding of
Yorkshire Council, appeared on behalf of the Promoters.
1. CHAIRMAN: Good
afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name
is Sylvia Heal and I am chairing this Unopposed Bill Committee. To my left are my colleagues Gordon Banks,
John Austin and, to my right, Robert Walter and Sir John Butterfill.
2. Ms
Gorlov, I wonder if I could ask you first to address the Committee and perhaps
you may want to introduce some of your colleagues who are with you this
afternoon.
3. MS GORLOV: I
have brought with me today my instructing solicitor, Rob Mansell, from East
Riding of Yorkshire Council who are the Promoters of this Bill. With him is Allan English, who is Deputy
Chairman of the Beverley Pasture Masters, the people who are responsible for
the Beverley pastures, and who will be proving the Preamble to the Bill.
4. The
Beverley Freemen Bill is concerned with some rights which are very ancient and
apply in the town of Beverley
in the East Riding of Yorkshire. It is a
place with which some of the Committee may be familiar and, if you are not, I
strongly recommend you go and see it. It
is a lovely little town in the East Riding, surrounded by some beautiful
countryside. The countryside includes
three areas of ancient pastureland which in the 12th Century were
given over by the then Bishop to the people of Beverley to use as pasturage,
and so it has continued ever since.
5. After
many changes over the years, the regime, as it now is, is that the Freemen of
Beverley, if they live within the Borough of Beverley, and I will come in a
minute to what that means, they are what is called 'Pasture Freemen', and those
are the Freemen who actually live in Beverley and were born there. They are entitled to pasture their beasts on
the common pastures around Beverley. If,
however, one is a Freeman who was not born in Beverley and does not live in
Beverley, one is not entitled to make use of the common pastures.
6. The
pastures are not just fields, like lots of commons with which one is familiar,
but they are actually managed, very actively managed, by the Beverley Pasture
Masters. They take care of these areas
of land, and they actually offer a remarkably good deal. For a very modest fee, one can put one's animals
out and know that they will actively be looked after by the Pasture Masters, so
for a whole season farmers have their animals looked after for them. That of course takes manpower and the
manpower represented today is of the Pasture Masters, but they, as I say, have
to be Pasture Freemen and that means that they have to comply with the
residence qualification. Well, when the
maternity hospital in Beverley closed, the chances of being born in Beverley
rapidly reduced and, when the area of the Borough of Beverley ceased to be the
major residential district in the town, the numbers also reduced, so the
purpose of this Bill is quite simply to prevent the Beverley Pasture Masters
from dying out, and I am sure Mr English will excuse me if I put it in that way!
7. If I can go through the Bill, it deals with
now just three points. The first is the
nature of the information that has to be provided when one applies to be a
Freeman, and that of course is the first step to becoming a Pasture
Freeman. It looks very innocuous, and
clause 3 of the Bill says that, when one applies to become a Freeman, one's
entitlement is determined by residence to an extended Beverley area. Now, as I say, the Borough of Beverley is the
old borough and that is the borough as defined by the Parliamentary Boundaries
Act 1832, and the reason for this is that the Beverley Pasture Masters are
governed by an Act of 1836 which described the borough in terms of what was
then the latest definition of the Borough of Beverley, and Beverley has since
grown. So the Pasture Masters and the
East Riding of Yorkshire Council have identified the area which can now be said
to be Beverley proper, and it is described in the Bill as the "extended Beverley
area" and, if you look at the Schedule to the Bill, you can see the description
of it. We thought that was rather more
successful than having a plan, but we have got a plan if you are interested to
see it. This is an area considerably
larger than Beverley as defined in 1832 and it takes in the areas where people
now live, so this means that the area within the catchment area for our Pasture
Freemen and Pasture Masters is greatly increased. Now, you might be asking why have we not got
something in here about being born outside the old borough. The reason we have not is because it was in
the Bill, as deposited, but the reason it is no longer there is because we were
overtaken by the Local Democracy Economic Development Construction Act 2009
which makes exactly the same provision, that one can become a Freeman, no
matter where one was born, so that takes care of birth and residence.
8. We
then come to clause 4. At the moment,
the administration of proving one's entitlement to become a Freeman is governed
by an Order made by the then Corporation in 1813, and we think it is probably
no more than a declaration of what the customary rules were, but, whatever it
was, it has been adhered to ever since.
It is all of it expressed in terms of sons, fathers and proof of
identity, which are really not appropriate, so what we are saying here is that,
as the role is maintained by the East Riding of Yorkshire Council, the
information to be provided to prove one's identity when applying to be a
Freeman should be whatever information the Council reasonably requires. Then subsection (2) says that the 1813 Order
ceases to have effect so far as it affects those applying to become Freemen by
birthright. I should perhaps explain
that we refer here to "freedom by birthright", but there is an entitlement to
become a Freeman by apprenticeship, although that is not dealt with in this
Bill and it is not relevant to our proceedings today.
9. Finally,
there is clause 5, the third point with which this Bill deals. These are modifications of the 1836 Act. The first two are fairly obvious; they
substitute references for the extended area where the 1836 Act governs all the
detail of the powers of the Pasture Freeman, and that Act refers to the borough
as it was.
10. Clause
5(c) refers to the "widows' roll" and the rights of widows. Section 33 of the Beverley Freemen Act 1836
gives widows the right to be admitted to a roll, like the Freemen's roll, but
it is a separate roll and, if they are on it, they are entitled to the same
pasturage rights that their deceased husbands had. We have not done anything about this in the
Bill, as deposited, but Mr Davis pointed out to us that, if we do have female
Pasture Freemen, there will be women who have the right to pasture cattle in
their own right and who have widowers, so it would be logical to extend the Bill
to apply to widowers, and that effectively is what these two paragraphs do;
they ensure that widowers are treated in the same way as widows.
11. I
might perhaps mention something that might be in the Committee's mind, and that
is the question of civil partnerships.
We wondered whether we ought to say something about civil partnerships
when we were considering what to do about widowers, and then Local Democracy
spiked our guns somewhat. The Local
Democracy Act has in it section 28 which brings in a new procedure for altering
the law relating to freedoms and similar, and that includes provision to enable
one to extend the same rights to civil partners as spouses have in the existing
law, so, if that is a change which needs to be made, we thought that we should
not amend the Bill, but that can be dealt with separately after. I think, Chairman, that is all I have got to
say about the Bill.
12. CHAIRMAN: Do
you wish to invite any of your colleagues at this point to say anything?
13. MS GORLOV: No,
thank you.
14. CHAIRMAN: I
will just ask my colleagues whether they have any questions they would like to
put to you.
15. ROBERT WALTER: I have several questions. You mentioned three areas of
pastureland. I wonder if you could tell
us what the size is of those areas, and what the nature of the land is
today. Is it public open space or is it
fenced as fields?
16. MS GORLOV: I
think it is a good idea to ask Mr English to answer that.
17. MR ENGLISH:
There are three common pastures in Beverley. The biggest one is the Westwood, which is
nearly a square mile. On the Westwood is
a golf course, a racecourse, it is open to the public and there are two roads
running through it. We have the problem
there sometimes during the summer when the cattle are being knocked over by
cars and lorries. The other two pastures
are fenced in and always have been. One
of them is called Swinemoor Pasture, which is about 220 acres, and then there
is Figham Pasture, and that is roughly about the same, about 220 acres. We have two neatherds who look after the
cattle and go round every day to check the cattle, maintain the fences,
maintain the land, harrow it and do whatever to keep it in good order. The public have as much right on the pastures
as we have, so on the pastures there are people with their dogs, people with
their horses, we have football on there, people play games on there, there is
model aircraft on there, so it is well-used by all the public and it is just
that in the pasturage it is an amenity to Beverley. As I say, the Pasture Masters look after it
and keep it as originally and we like to think we look after it as a pasture,
and that is how we would like to maintain it, as a pasture. The beasts, the cattle and the horses, that
are on keep the grass down, so, as I say, it is well-maintained and used by
everybody in Beverley.
18. ROBERT WALTER: Well, that is very helpful. Could I, therefore, ask you: how many Freemen
are there currently, how many of them are Pasture Freemen, how many of the
Pasture Freemen exercise the rights to graze their cattle, and is there any
regulation as to how many cattle each Pasture Freeman can put on?
19. MR ENGLISH:
At the present moment, actively in Beverley, there are only about
98, I think, Pasture Freemen, but, once you have taken up your 'freedomship',
you are a Freeman, but you have no rights until you move back into the Borough
of Beverley. The Freemen have the right
to pasture their cattle, but every 1 March we have an election and the Freemen
of Beverley elect the 12 Pasture Masters and then the 12 Pasture Masters that
are elected look after the pastures for that year. Then we send out notices to people who have
cattle and what-have-you and then they apply for, what are called, 'so many
gates', so, if you are a Pasture Freeman and you wanted to have 30 cattle, you
would apply for 30 gates, but, if your colleague is not a Freeman, he could
still apply to have his cattle on as well as you and at the end when we check
how many we have coming on to the pastures per acre, we allocate them to how
many we can get on, so, if you apply for 30 and we could accommodate your 30
cattle, you would get 30 gates. The only
thing is that, if your colleague wanted 30 gates on and we could accommodate
his 30 gates, you would get yours at two-thirds of the rate and he would have to
pay the full amount, so that is how it would work out.
20. ROBERT WALTER: So the Pasture Masters control the grazing in
the sense of limiting the numbers?
21. MR ENGLISH:
Yes.
22. ROBERT WALTER: Which brings me to, I suppose, my last
question, and I speak from some of experience in that I am a Dartmoor Commoner
which means that I have grazing rights on Dartmoor which are limited actually
by my land, but, if you are going to extend the freedom to a lot more people,
it could mean that you were actually devaluing the rights of the existing
Pasture Freemen because they may not be able to graze as many animals. Is that something which has been considered
by the existing Pasture Freemen?
23. MR ENGLISH: No, that would not make a lot of difference.
There are a lot of Freemen who have never pastured their beasts or anything,
but they have still become Freemen because in the days gone by their parents or
their fathers are Freemen and they have never taken the freedomship.
24. MS GORLOV: Perhaps I can interrupt there because I think
there might be a certain amount of conflating, as it were, the Pasture Freemen
with the Freemen. There are 190 people
on the Freemen's roll and what I think we have not told the Committee is that,
of the 98 Pasture Freemen, how many of them, on average, take up their rights
to graze cattle?
25. MR ENGLISH: At
the present moment, I would say only two or three because over the years they
have got older and they have given up or sold their businesses and
what-have-you.
26. MS GORLOV: So
there are only two or three stockers?
27. MR ENGLISH: Only
two or three stockers. A lot of the
stockers now are on the fringes, just outside of Beverley, so we are relying on
those people to come in and stock for us.
28. ROBERT WALTER: So you effectively rent pasture to people who
would not normally have the rights to graze that land?
29. MR ENGLISH: Yes,
well, as I say, we sort of rent out to anybody that would like to pasture on
the commons, but, as I say, if you are a Pasture Freeman, you would have the
right first to pasture yours on the pastures.
30. ROBERT WALTER: So the answer to my question, I think, is that
effectively, as there are only two or three Pasture Freemen who are exercising
their rights and you have got several hundred acres of pasture, nobody is going
to have their rights diminished as a result of this Bill?
31. MR ENGLISH: No.
32. GORDON BANKS: You mentioned renting out the rights, so, out
of interest, who receives the income from the renting out of those rights? Does it go to the Council?
33. MR ENGLISH: No.
34. GORDON BANKS: Who does it go to and how is it
reinvested?
35. MR ENGLISH: It
is reinvested and it goes to the Pasture Masters. You see, we run the pastures and it is like
running a 600-acre farm.
36. GORDON BANKS: So you just reinvest it?
37. MR ENGLISH: Most
of it is reinvested, but there is a stipulation. At the end of the stocking season, we have
what we call a 'non-stockers payment', so all those Pasture Freemen that are on
the roll that have not stocked are entitled to the payment that we pay out at
the end of the year, which is nominal.
At the moment, it is £25.
38. GORDON BANKS: So this money goes back?
39. MR ENGLISH: It is sort of reimbursing you because you
have not stocked, so it is giving you something for not stocking, so, as I say,
we have this, what we call, 'non-stockers payment', but you can only claim that
if you are a non-stocker. If you have
stock on, you do not claim it because you have stocked.
40. CHAIRMAN: I do
not think my colleagues have any further questions and indeed, in your
responses to those questions which have been posed, you clearly amplified what
we needed to know. Perhaps I could just
ask you to leave the committee room for a few moments while we make our
decision. I do not anticipate having to
leave you waiting for very long.
The
witnesses withdrew; upon being recalled
41. CHAIRMAN: I am
very pleased to be able to tell you, Ms Gorlov, and your colleagues that the
Committee are content with what they have heard and are very happy for this
Bill to proceed to its next parliamentary stage; we wish you every success with
doing that. I wonder if you could now
prove the preamble to formally conclude the proceedings.
MR
ALLAN ENGLISH, sworn previously
Examined
by MS GORLOV
42. MS GORLOV: Mr English, is your name
Allan English?
(Mr English) It is.
43. MS GORLOV: Are
you the Vice Chairman of the Beverley Pasture Masters?
(Mr English) I am.
44. MS GORLOV: Mr
English, have you read the preamble to the Bill?
(Mr English) Yes.
45. MS GORLOV: Is
it true?
(Mr English) Yes.
46. MS GORLOV: Thank you.
47. CHAIRMAN: Thank
you all for your attendance, and for answering all of our questions and giving
us a fuller picture of just what is involved with the Beverley Freemen
Bill. We shall watch its development
with interest. Thank you very much.
________________
Transcribed
by the Official Shorthand Writers to the Houses of Parliament:
W B
Gurney & Sons LLP, Hope House, 45
Great Peter Street, London, SW1P 3LT
Telephone
Number: 020 7233 1935
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