I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I shall do so, and at the same time attempt to speak more directly to the amendment. I fear that I have strayed into more of a stand part debate in my comments so far.

A good example of a relevant situation would be a foot and mouth outbreak—an emergency involving pressing issues of animal health and farmers’ livelihoods, in which we should need to act quickly. We should not want to become involved in negotiation with an agency about how to act; one would hope that we would previously have agreed how the agency was to act, but I should still not want to anticipate whether there would be a need to issue directions in such an emergency. Equally, with reference to the amendment, I should not want to have to give 30 days’ notice of the direction. I should want to allow the agency to get on with the action that the Government required it to take to respond directly to the problem in hand.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding me to get back to the amendment. I hope that the example has been helpful in showing why I think it would be a mistake to apply a 30-day delay to the coming into force of any directions, and I hope that on that basis the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire will withdraw the amendment.