Private Equity (Transfer of Undertakings and Protection of Employment) Bill

I do not want to get bogged down in the legal niceties of these things. Let me freely admit from the beginning that, because of the time that I had to get the Bill drafted and published, I have made mistakes. I want to explain the issue in detail first, but I will come to the hon. Gentleman's point later on. Initially I went to people and said, ““Why can't we do this?””, and the answer I got was fairly straightforward: ““When you have a share transfer you don't have a change of ownership, and so it's not necessary. We don't do TUPE in those circumstances.”” One of the people who has been helping me to put the Bill together—I will not mention his name, because it might embarrass him, but for the sake of debate we will call him Jack Dromey—said to me: ““But why not?””, and that has stayed with me ever since. Whenever people say, ““We don't do that””, my response is, ““Why not?”” If it is a good idea to apply the same rules to these people, why do we not do it? When I have spoken to people about this, it has been very much a case of shifting sands, as the arguments as to ““Why not?”” have changed. Two reasons for not making the change were put forward: first, that it was not necessary because people were already protected under other legislation; and secondly, that it would be burdensome for business. I thought, ““Those are both good reasons, but hold on a minute—you can't have both of them, because one cancels out the other.”” If the workers have these protections and all the rights that they enjoy under TUPE anyway, and there is no problem with that, how is it burdensome to ask that that be written in law and carried out? The two arguments did not balance, and I still do not accept them. The principle that I have started to understand is that when there is a private equity takeover or a transfer of shares that gives a controlling interest, that means, by its very nature, that the workers in those undertakings will be faced with significant change in which they will not have the same protection as they would under another kind of transfer. Their terms and conditions are not subject to the same protection, and their rights to consultation are not the same. We have to move towards dealing with that.