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

It means a controlling shareholding, where someone takes control of a company. It is not too difficult to spot when that is happening, and people know about it. Again, there is a definition in my explanatory notes, but it is in lawyers' words. I cannot pretend that I even understand it. It is the old thing—I am talking about things that I know, but which I do not have the legalistic jargon to go through. However, people know when something is happening. Let us be clear: we know what is happening when there is a takeover. Certainly the workers know—or rather, the workers do not know, and that is the real problem. Why should workers not have a right to know what is going on when there is a takeover? The first of the three distinct things in the Bill is a requirement to consult and inform employee representatives. What is wrong with that? The Department will tell me, ““Well, they have a right to consultation anyway—that's covered by other legislation.”” That is not quite accurate, however. The workers have a right to consultation when a certain percentage of them ask for it, but really, that happens after the event. TUPE gives people an automatic right for that happen. If that right is automatic under TUPE, why should it not be automatic under the takeovers that I am talking about, too? The next thing that the Bill would do is give protection to workers' contracts of employment and their employment rights, where they are employed in an undertaking or business immediately before control is transferred. That would include trade union recognition.