Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 2: 2: Clause 2, page 3, line 21, at end insert— ““( ) A local authority must not enter into arrangements under section 1 until it has discharged all of its duties, responsibilities and liabilities under the Transfer of Undertakings (protection of Employment) Regulations 2006.”” The noble Baroness said: I need not delay noble Lords long on this amendment, because having had the debate about social work practices this is a fairly straightforward debate about TUPE or the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006, which provide employment rights to employees when their employer changes as a result of the transfer of an undertaking. That includes service provision changes, cases where services are outsourced, insourced or assigned by a client to a new contractor. Clause 1(1) would mean a form of contracting out of services, because it allows local authorities to delegate their functions in relation to looked-after children to providers of social work. As a result, the purpose behind the amendment is to probe whether the Government have considered the application of the TUPE regulations in this instance, as that would be a form of contracting out and therefore TUPE should apply. That means that the staff employed in the local authority would automatically transfer, or those who were transferred over to the private undertaking and the terms and conditions of contractual rights that they have would be protected. It has major implications for the business models of contractors that may be interested in setting up social work practices. I raise the issue because, as the Government know, there has been considerable experience of contracting out of various aspects of other services, including for example education services, where groups of officers from a local education authority had been moved en bloc into private providers, which had then, somewhat to their surprise, found themselves taking on TUPE obligations, for example in relation to pensions. The question behind the amendment is essentially probing. Have the Government considered these issues and the implications that they may have on the costs involved, even in relation to the pilot exercises, let alone in the long run, should the pilots suggest that the model be extended? I beg to move.