Employment Rights Bill (Thirteenth sitting)

Debate between Laurence Turner and Sarah Gibson

Committee stage
Tuesday 17th December 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Gibson (Chippenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I really welcome the clause. Despite the fact that their uniforms, pensions and contracts said “NHS”, staff at a community hospital in my constituency only realised that they had been effectively TUPE-ed over to a private business when they failed to receive the £1,000 bonus that all their colleagues in the main hospitals got. One may say, “How naive of them; they should have read their contracts better,” but most of them had been NHS workers for 25 years, so they were completely unaware that this had happened to them and that they were no longer entitled. I must thank the then contractor, a charity, for lobbying hard to make sure that eventually they got some kind of bonus, but to be suddenly without those conditions was quite frightening for them. So I welcome these measures.

I take some issue with what the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire said. For many years, I served as part of Wiltshire council, which is a Conservative-led council. It was locked into a service contract for maintenance that was poor and used to lower wages, producing a system where we had very little maintenance. Our town councils are now having to pick up the bill for repairing grounds and play areas because the company, although it had the contract and was paid by the local authority, was not carrying out the works. Therefore, I welcome this measure and I am pleased to support it.

[Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. Merry Christmas, everyone. In that spirit of glad tidings, I draw the Committee’s attention to my declarations in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my membership of the GMB and Unite trade unions.

Clause 25 enables the reinstatement of one of two bodies that are to be reinstated by the Bill—the other is the school support staff negotiating body, which I hope we will come to today. The clause stands in a long and proud tradition in this Parliament, and at its heart is a simple question: what duty does the state owe to people who perform services on its behalf? The phrase “two tier” has become highly charged in recent years, but I hope that we can channel some of that spirit of protest towards the iniquity of two-tier workforces.

The injustice is easy to describe—in fact, the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire, described it. When a public service is outsourced, the original workers’ pay and terms and conditions are protected to a certain extent by TUPE, but those of the workers who are subsequently employed on that contract are not. Even when they carry out exactly the same duties, they will normally be paid inferior rates.

That is understandably a cause of tension and resentment at many sites where services continue to be performed on behalf of the public sector. The original workers who are TUPE-ed over can be singled out for victimisation and adverse treatment on the part of their new employer. We know from the labour force survey, in the days when that instrument was in better health, that many such workers continue to regard themselves as part of the public sector and are motivated by public service. The workers who tend to find themselves in this position are more likely to be women, on lower earnings and from non-white backgrounds.

The case for parity of treatment was made powerfully in the last Parliament by the Defence Committee, which at the time had a Conservative Chair. The Committee’s report on the treatment of contracted staff for ancillary services states:

“In general, the terms and conditions of outsourced employees are worse than those of their directly employed counterparts, with reduced wages and benefits…The Ministry of Defence should do more to ensure that contracted staff receive comparable employment contracts to staff directly employed by the MoD.”

That is precisely what the reinstated and strengthened two-tier code, enabled by this clause, will accomplish.

Two-tier workforces are not just unfair on workers; they represent a failure of public policy. When margins are tight, bidders can end up competing not on efficiency or innovation, but on a squeezing of wages. We need only look at Carillion for a prominent example of what can go wrong, and of the wider liability for taxpayers when a contractor loses sight of its wider operations. The direct cost to the public sector has been estimated at some £150 million, the wider debts to the private sector were in the region of £2 billion, and the National Audit Office has warned that we will not know the true cost for many years to come.

The shadow Minister referred to the sepia-tinted days—perhaps we should say the blue-rinse days— of 2006, but I was grateful for the contributions from the hon. Members for Chippenham and for Torbay, because there is a long-standing and cross-party record on this matter. We can go back to 1891, when the radical Liberal politician Sydney Buxton moved the fair wages resolution, a resolution of this House, which was carried unanimously—at that time, Parliament had a Conservative majority. He said:

“The Government is far the greatest letter-out of contracts in the country, and Government contracts are the most popular for three reasons. In the first place, the contractor makes no bad debts; secondly, he has quick returns; and, thirdly, a Government contract forms a good advertisement. The consequence is, that there is great competition, and tenders are cut down very much at the expense of the labour market. Such a state of things is unfair to the good employer…and injurious to the community. The fair employer is placed at a very great disadvantage as compared with the unfair.”—[Official Report, 13 February 1891; Vol. 350, c. 618.]

Those arguments hold true today. That fair wages resolution was adapted and improved down the years, and took its final form under the Attlee Government in 1946. It has subsequently been exported around the world, in the form of International Labour Organisation convention No. 94. Indeed, those great British protections, developed in this Parliament, apply now in Italy, Spain and such far-flung places as Brazil, but because of decisions taken in the 1980s, they do not apply to contracted-out workers in this country. I very much welcome the opportunity to put that right.

The two-tier code existed previously, between 2005 and 2006. It grew out of an earlier iteration in local government, and it has been in force subsequently in Wales, where the sky has not fallen in in terms of service provision. [Interruption.] If the shadow Minister wants to intervene, he is welcome to.

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[Laurence Turner]

I will pick up the point just made about the changes made in 2017. Some of the opposition at that time came from the august institution of the Institute of Economic Affairs, which said that, if the regulations were introduced,

“they may encourage outsourcing of lower-paid jobs which happen to be taken by women (to avoid inclusion in a firm’s own return).”

That point has also been made by other organisations. King’s College London published a study on this matter three years ago, which said that

“focusing on the pay gap headline number can risk organisations seeking to window-dress their figures by outsourcing lower-paid jobs, which in turn worsens overall gender segregation within the labour market.”

Therefore, this extension of gender pay gap reporting to outsourced workers really does close that loophole and remove that perverse incentive—one example of many that we have heard about in this Committee.

We also heard from the Women’s Budget Group; Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson, giving evidence, said:

“We welcome the move to include outsourced workers in gender pay gap reporting…We are very conscious that you will quite often see that the lowest paid workers, particularly in the public sector, are now outsourced.”––[Official Report, Employment Rights Public Bill Committee, 28 November 2024; c. 163, Q176.]

The measures as proposed would effectively link the outsourced employer’s reporting to the reporting of the primary contracting authority. I hope that, when the regulations are drafted, they will shed some light on the extent of outsourcing across the economy; these workers are often invisible in official statistics, which is a wider problem for our understanding of the labour market. However, this move within the Bill is welcome.

I will just come back on one point; the shadow Minister referred to elected leaders of the Labour party. He is quite right to point out that the Labour party has not elected a woman leader—I very much hope that that will happen—but, for completeness, under the Labour party rulebook there is no role of “acting” or “interim” leader. It is therefore important to say, for the record, that in the eyes of the rulebook the noble Baronesses Beckett and Harman were as much leaders of the Labour party as any men who have fulfilled that role, and they served with distinction.

[Sarah Gibson]

I am not sure that highlighting quite how quickly the Conservatives go through leaders is helpful, but we do have to recognise that they have had the highest number of female leaders of any of our parties here, which is to be commended.

On a serious note, I welcome the intentions of clause 27. It is incredibly important that we start to shine a light on outsourcing, especially in the public sector, which I have seen myself, as I highlighted earlier, regarding the Chippenham hospital. To a certain extent, it seems to be a way of hiding some of the less clear and sensible ways we employ people, especially when it comes to low-paid, often female workers. I will therefore be supporting this clause and I am very pleased to do so.

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[Laurence Turner]

In addition to the interest to which I drew attention earlier, my partner is a trustee of a multi-academy trust.

The reinstatement of the school support staff negotiating body is a hugely welcome measure and long overdue. It is a real shame to hear that there will be cross-party division on this question, because the consequences of the decision to abolish the SSSNB are negative, they are serious and they are now plain to see. We will come on to detailed discussion of the schedule and the amendments, but it is worth reflecting on the rationale that the then Government gave back in 2010 for abolishing the SSSNB. The Secretary of State at the time said—and he never went much beyond this—that the Government had

“concluded that the SSSNB does not fit well with the Government’s priorities for greater deregulation of the pay and conditions arrangement for the school workforce.”

What has been the consequence of that decision? We saw it last year, when the Low Pay Commission, for the first time, reclassified school support staff roles as low-paying occupations. That should be a mark of shame on the Governments that oversaw that unhappy outcome—which, as I said, was a consequence of the decision to abolish that body.

[Sarah Gibson]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman; I must make a declaration that my parents were a state headmaster and headmistress before their retirement. One issue that I strongly feel needs to be taken into consideration—though perhaps it is not relevant to this Committee—is that funding for education in general has driven down the pay of these roles. If there were good funding for the education sector in general, these roles would not need so much protection. While we are considering giving more bargaining power, we also need to ensure that there is enough funding for education so that those roles can be paid, otherwise there will merely be fewer of them. I think that is something we need to take into consideration, do you not?

[The Chair]

Mr Turner needs to take it into consideration, not me.

Employment Rights Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Debate between Laurence Turner and Sarah Gibson

Committee stage
Tuesday 17th December 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Gibson]

I appreciate the point, and the shadow Minister is quite right: I was assuming that without support there might be such a situation. However, that does not detract from the fact that in most situations, having a body that someone can go to that is independent from their employer has to be a supporting situation. Nobody would go to that body for support if they were being paid above the average in their area.

[Laurence Turner]

Is it the case—perhaps this gets to the heart of the matter—that the proposed way that the SSSNB would work is that a matter would be referred to a body, an agreement would be reached, and it would be passed back to the Secretary of State to write it into regulations? Nowhere in the Bill does it say that that would be a ceiling. If it was something that was negotiated between the parties, it would be a floor that could be improved on. There is nothing in the Bill to stop that happening.

[Sarah Gibson]

I appreciate the clarification. That makes perfect sense—it would be unlikely that a body representing employees would create a ceiling, so I cannot help feeling that that issue is not likely to come up. With that in mind, I am unable to support the amendment.

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[Laurence Turner]

I want to come back on some of the points that the shadow Minister raised. I appreciate his clarification about exactly what information the Opposition are trying to tease out with amendment 124. I hope he does not mind me saying that the cost of any future settlement agreement is speculative in nature. We heard from the Minister earlier that part of the remit that Ministers will give the body will be about affordability and the funding available at the time. It will probably be several years in the future when that new pay scale comes into force, albeit that there is some good work that the SSSNB could be getting on with in the interim that would have very low costs for the sector.

We have some information about how much the body itself would cost. An answer to a written parliamentary question in 2011 put the estimated cost saving of abolishing the SSSNB at £1.4 million over the spending review period. That was about £350,000 a year. In today’s prices, we are looking at close to half a million. That is a very small fraction of a percentage of the Department’s budget, and it is probably an overestimate given that civil service wages have not kept pace with inflation over that time. The former education spokesperson for the Labour party, Andy Burnham, who was involved in the setting up of the original SSSNB, described it as a “low-cost panel”. That is exactly what we are talking about here. I hope that that provides some reassurance that amendment 124 is not necessary.

The SSSNB produced annual reports, which were published by the Government in the normal way. The Department for Education tracks the costs of school support staff pay increases. That information is made available, including to sector representatives, through the schools and academies funding group. I hear what the shadow Minister says, but I do not think these amendments are necessary because the information is unknowable or already available, or it will be made available in the normal course of business.

[Sarah Gibson]

For similar reasons as I was concerned about previous amendments, I feel that I cannot support this amendment. I think it is unnecessary to add more complications to the system on things that are probably already covered in other areas.

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[Sarah Gibson]

I support the schedule. Over the past 10 years, we have seen how difficult it has been to retain and employ support staff in our schools, partly because they do not see a career progression and do not see themselves valued. I hope that this body will help to support those staff and will allow them to feel that they are very much part of the education authority and so have that support.

[Laurence Turner]

We have covered a huge amount of ground in this debate, so I will restrict my remarks to a few matters that have been raised. I say to the shadow Minister that if he thought that the Minister’s summary was bureaucratic and difficult to follow, he should sit through some meetings of the National Joint Council for Local Government Services, which is the dominant mode through which pay and terms and conditions are set.

It is worth reflecting briefly on some of the practical issues in schools that can be remedied through this new approach. It is a well-known problem that schoolteachers’ and school support staff’s pay award dates are misaligned. For schoolteachers, it is September; for school support staff, it is April, with the financial year. That can be a nightmare for bursars, school business managers and large employers, who have to plan their budgets with that significant difference.

In a previous life, I sat through a working group convened by the Local Government Association through the NJC on a vexed issue: how can school support staff’s work out of term-time be calculated on a term-time-only contract, because they are accumulating annual leave but cannot take all of it during term? It was a bit like a version of this Committee that reached no conclusions and never ended. These are real problems that result from the ossification of the NJC system. It is not appropriate for school support staff workers. As we all know, when a pay and grading system becomes ossified, legal danger lurks for employers in the inconsistencies that emerge.

There is no justification for saying that TA level 2 means something completely different in neighbouring authorities. That can become a block on people’s progression and ambitions to relocate. Multi-academy trusts and other academy employers overwhelmingly remain subscribed to the NJC, because this system of pay and grading, which has grown up over decades, is labyrinthine and difficult to follow, and most academy trusts do not have the HR and payroll functions to put something new in place.

We can put some figures on this. The school workforce census carried out by the Department for Education collects data on NJC coverage compared with other pay gradings. For local authority maintained schools, 80% of school support staff are paid on NJC grades, when non-responses are excluded. For academies, the figure is 77%, so there is no huge difference between the two sectors. Even among the remainder, some staff are employed under separate agreements with Soulbury terms, so are quite separate, and a high proportion—possibly even the majority—are paid on NJC-like terms and conditions, although there might be some local improvements to those pay gradings. That is the issue that the Confederation of School Trusts raised in its written evidence, and I think it has been addressed through this Committee. We are seeking to establish a floor, not a ceiling, so local improvements can still be made where employers and trade unions agree them.

The clause takes a lot from the lessons that were learned from the previous iteration of the SSSNB, which is welcome. The clauses on the adult social care negotiating body contain a general provision that any specified matter relating to employment could be referred to that body. Proposed new section 148J is drafted a bit more tightly for the SSSNB—at least, that is my reading of it—so I wonder whether there is a case for aligning the wording for the two bodies.

Let me go back to why we are doing this. School support staff are the hidden professionals in the education system. I did not just represent school support staff; I was once a school governor in a specialist SEND setting, and there were school support staff and teaching assistants. It is important to remember that the term covers site staff, cleaners, caterers and all sorts of other workers, who often do not get talked about. Those workers make lifesaving interventions—they may have to administer medicine or perform a medical intervention that literally keeps a child alive—but they are paid about £14,000 a year. That represents a failure of central Government to account for the pay, conditions and wellbeing of all the people who work in schools. The measures we are discussing are hugely important and welcome, and it is very welcome that the Bill has been brought forward this early in the Parliament.

Employment Rights Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Laurence Turner and Sarah Gibson

Committee stage
Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Gibson]

As I have stated, I am concerned for small businesses and have spoken to many across my constituency of Chippenham that are extremely concerned about the cumulative effects of these measures on businesses without an HR department and about the huge cost they will impose. However, although I welcome the amendment, I am seriously concerned that if we create a system in which the rights of those who work for small businesses are curtailed, that will affect their ability to take on extra staff.

I feel as though I could have supported the amendment if it had been drafted for seriously small businesses, rather than SMEs of up to 500 employees. I struggle to think of a firm in my constituency with that many employees that does not have an HR department, because they would be struggling as a single employer—I used to struggle as the HR department of my own business with 15 employees. If the number of employees in the amendment could be brought down to around 20, it would be much more acceptable to those kinds of small businesses, but as it is, I would find it difficult to support.

[Laurence Turner]

I rise to make two brief points that have not been made in this debate. The first, which is narrow, is that we already have a legal definition of SMEs under the Companies Acts 2006, which defines the upper limit as 249 employees. I acknowledge that the previous Government’s position was to extend to new regulations the higher thresholds that those on the shadow Front Bench are seeking to put forward through these amendments. I am happy to be corrected, but I do not believe that any legislation incorporating that position was subsequently carried. There is a serious point here. These may be probing amendments—we will find out shortly—but this process is not the right point to introduce a new legal definition.

Employment Rights Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Laurence Turner and Sarah Gibson

Committee stage
Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Laurence Turner]

I will not keep the Committee long. A lot has rightly been said about the need for certainty for business, but we should remember that the other side of the coin is the need for workers to have certainty. I was contacted recently by a constituent who works a zero-hours contract in the hospitality sector. He is unable to get a mortgage because the bank will not grant that facility to him due to the nature of his contract. At the level of the individual, this means economic activity and family planning being put on hold.

In parts of the economy, there are employment situations—we do not, of course, tar all employers with the same brush, but if there were no bad employers there would be no need for trade unions—in which people are turning up to work, sometimes in digital form, to find shifts being mediated through applications, not even through people. It is the 21st-century equivalent of a foreman standing at the factory gate and allocating shifts on an arbitrary basis. We have heard today about the potential, which is too often realised, for favouritism and abuse of that facility.

We have had good debate about a number of details regarding the changes in the Bill. The changes in clause 1 will be welcomed by people who work in the retail sector, including in my constituency, and in other sectors that have high rates of zero-hours contract working, including the care sector. I very much welcome the clause.

[Sarah Gibson]

Despite some of my concerns, I would like to lend my support to the clause, because the guarantees for workers are important. I caveat that by saying that the guidance for SMEs must be clear and must come out soon, so that there is less concern in the business community about taking on staff. Currently, I see an unintended consequence in SMEs, certainly in the near future, not taking on staff because of the fear of additional costs.

While I am on my feet, I would like to make a correction for the record in respect of this morning’s debate. In the debate on amendment 137, although the shadow Minister made a comment about this in his closing speech, it was not my intention to suggest that the Liberal Democrats wish to alter the current definition of SMEs from being 249 employees. I want to make sure that is clear.

Employment Rights Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Laurence Turner and Sarah Gibson

Committee stage
Thursday 28th November 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Gibson]

Q I have a quick question. Do you think that some of the reforms in the Bill will genuinely help people who are disabled to go back into work in a more flexible and safer environment, and will therefore encourage them to take on employment where perhaps they are not doing that at the moment?

Nye Cominetti: The bit of the Bill that most obviously addresses that is the right to request flexible work, which is being strengthened, as I am sure you know—employers now have to give a justification for saying no. When you look at surveys of workers with disabilities or elderly workers, flexibility is very often mentioned as something that might have helped them to stay in work.

If you will allow me to make a second point, surrounding all these measures and, in fact, our employment framework more generally, are questions of enforcement and worker power—they are sitting at the side, but they are absolutely crucial. There are many existing rights that workers have on paper, but because our enforcement systems are fairly weak, especially compared with other countries where the state does more of the job of enforcing these rights, people do not necessarily experience in reality the entitlements that the law says they should have.

Even in a world where workers gain that strengthened right to flexible work, that means little if they, for example, look at the employment tribunal system delays and think, “Well, that’s an impossibility. There’s no point fighting my employer over this. I’m never going to win that,” or, “I can’t spend the next two years waiting to win that.” So the answer is yes, but only if we also resolve some of the existing problems about people’s ability to enforce their own entitlements.

[Laurence Turner]

Q I was struck, in the impact assessments, by the statements that a number of the costs, but particularly more the benefits, or potential benefits, of these measures cannot currently be quantified. There are, of course, well-advertised problems with UK labour market statistics at the moment. Realistically, what more could the Government do in respect of future measures to better capture the full range of costs and benefits associated with employment law?

Nye Cominetti: You are right: labour market statistics are not currently in a good place. The Office for National Statistics’ labour force survey is in the doldrums in terms of response rates; so if you wanted to increase the resources going into that, I would welcome that, as a researcher. Realistically, many of these knock-on benefits are incredibly hard to estimate. Personally, I think we have to accept a world where we say, we know that workers will benefit in terms of wellbeing from some of these measures. I do not think you need to put a monetary value on that to say it is worth doing, personally, but I know that is not necessarily the way that Government Departments think about these things.

In terms of the costs—businesses will be saying, “If you do this measure, I will have to reduce hiring by this much”—I think we could be moving from relying on what businesses say. I know that many businesses will be engaging with these processes in good faith, but the history, for example with the minimum wage, is for businesses to say, “If you raise this cost there will be dire consequences: job losses will look like x and y,” and in the end that does not turn out to happen because businesses find ways to adapt. That does not mean that will happen this time—there is no guarantee that you can keep pulling off the same trick of raising labour costs and not triggering an impact on employment—but looking for evidence on what has actually happened in response to similar changes in the past or in other countries, rather than relying on what businesses say, might be a better guide. But that might be controversial.

Employment Rights Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Laurence Turner and Sarah Gibson

Committee stage
Thursday 28th November 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Gibson]

Q I am glad to hear that you share my concerns for small and medium-sized enterprises. As you have probably all noticed—it is in my declaration of interests—I have run a small business both here and on the continent for most of my adult life, so I feel for them. It was the first thing that came up once I started to read the Bill.

You mention that you are concerned about day one rights. I wonder about the changes in the probation period. We seem to be in agreement that it might affect where you draw your prospective employees from. Can you suggest any amendments to the Bill that might encourage the entrepreneurial small businesses we so rely on to continue to take on staff from areas of deprivation or the long-term unemployed—those who currently struggle to get work?

Michael Lorimer: I was at a breakfast yesterday morning for the launch the Jobs Foundation’s report, “Two Million Jobs”. A chap from Sheffield spoke who runs an organisation that gets young people into work. He gave the example of a kid—I cannot remember his name—who would not normally find it easy to get a job interview. They trained him and helped him to get the right attire to get him into a job. The point was that this guy looked very risky—he had not worked, and he came from a long line of people who had not really seen any value in work—but he got the job because the people interviewing him saw something that they thought was worth working with. They knew they were taking a risk; they did. He has turned out to be an absolutely superb kid and is now progressing well.

Equally, yesterday I spoke to a friend of mine, a CEO of a business, who had somebody who interviewed incredibly well, did very well for the first 12 months, got promoted and at month 13 or 14 became an absolute monster to manage. Under the two-year rights, they were able to sort that out.

As we all know, you can get the interview stage right or wrong with hires. For SMEs, you just need to give comfort and space that hopefully they will get the right hires, but that if they do get the wrong hires and it is not the right fit, there is an escape route. Personally, I do not want to put a time on that. Our system works well for us at the minute, but I am sure Luke might have an opinion.

Luke Johnson: I find this a big piece of legislation, by my standards: 150 pages is probably what you are used to, but as someone running a business who has 1,000 other things to do than read a 150-page piece of legislation about employment, I find the whole thing rather a surprise. The Prime Minister said that he wants to

“rip out the bureaucracy that blocks investment”.

If there is a genuine belief in the Government that this legislation will boost investment, I have a bridge to sell them.

[Laurence Turner]

Q I apologise to the panel for returning to an earlier dispute in this quite disjointed way, but just for the record, earlier this week one of our witnesses, Paul Nowak, said:

“I do not think there is a direct link; you do not pass a piece of legislation and trade union membership and collective bargaining go up”.––[Official Report, Employment Rights Public Bill Committee, 26 November 2024; c. 67.]

Another witness, Mick Lynch, said that personally he hoped to see 50% collective bargaining coverage. That is compared with 39% now. It seems like thin margarine to me and certainly not a unionisation of the economy, but there we go.

My question to the panel is the same question that was put to employers’ federations earlier this week. We all understand the points that you have made, but are there specific measures in the Bill that you welcome?

Michael Lorimer: No.

Luke Johnson: No.

Michael Lorimer: I am not trying to be contrarian, but I think Luke’s point is a very good one. There are 150 pages and 28 new measures, or whatever it is. Apart from anything else, it is an administrative burden. I welcome the White Paper hugely, but there is nothing in here that I am excited about.

Luke Johnson: I will give you an example of one very specific issue that may arise that I do not think has been thought through properly, and its unintended consequences. There is an adjustment to collective redundancy rights. This would, I guess, normally apply in a business that is going through a very severe restructuring and possibly an insolvency.

What happens in an insolvency is that a buyer can keep that business alive and keep a chunk of the jobs, at least, from going by buying it out of administration. The one thing that goes through an administration is the TUPE rights of the employees. If you are only buying a small portion of that business, normally you can carve out only TUPE rights relating to the staff of the bit you are buying—let us say that it is several divisions, departments or whatever. As I understand it, this will tighten that, as proposed, such that almost any buyer of any part of that business will face the TUPE rights of the whole workforce. The unintended consequence will therefore be that parts of a business that were good and that could survive will not; they will be shut. The whole thing will be shut and all the jobs will be lost.

I do not think that whoever drew up that part of the legislation has fully thought it through, because it is in society’s interest that where businesses can be saved and rescued—I have been involved on both sides in those situations—they should be. It is always a great deal easier in certain respects to save a business that has failed because it had too much debt, or some other problem, than to start all over again from scratch.

Michael Lorimer: Perhaps I should add that there are aspects of this that I am quite neutral or comfortable about. There are some things around bereavement, and so on, that are all good. I emphasise that my focus today is around the day one stuff and flexibility.