Further to what the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster said, I have received a briefing from a very distinguished trade union—a closed shop, in fact—known as the Law Society, which indicates that it also supports the amendment.

It appears that our colleagues in the Law Society are also prepared to go to the barricades on this matter. As the hon. Gentleman said, the Law Society's point is that the majority of complex monopoly investigations can be handled within nine months. In my experience, if such investigations are allowed to take two years, it is likely that, henceforth, they will take two years.

Subsection (4) limits any orders, so that they can vary the period only to two years. With regard to that, there is not a consequential amendment, so I presume that somebody clever at the Law Society has thought that they can keep the possibility of an extended period. As the hon. Member for Huntingdon said, allowing extensions on a case by case basis makes more sense than the blanket provision.