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

I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. Heppell) on bringing forward his Bill and on his success in the ballot. I have never had the opportunity to introduce a private Member's Bill. When I have such an opportunity, I hope that I can take it up with the same humility and panache that he displayed. He was disarmingly frank in saying that he is not a world-leading authority on private equity. That admission did him a lot of credit, and I will certainly not claim to be such an authority either. Over the past few days, I have rapidly tried to learn more about the subject. The hon. Gentleman made it clear at the start that he has no intention to introduce any unnecessary burdens on business or to do any harm to the economy, and I accept, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) did, that he brings forward his Bill with the best of intentions. My quibble with him relates to the outcome or potential outcome of the Bill, not to his motivations. He said that he wanted to protect the rights of workers, which is a perfectly honourable and laudable aim. But my view is that the most important right of a worker is to have work, and my chief concern about the Bill is that fewer people would be in work as a result of it than are in work currently. Sir Alfred Sherman, a great hero of mine who unfortunately died in 2006, referred in one of his books to politicians making proposals that were ““painless panaceas””. I fear that the Bill is an attempt to introduce yet another painless panacea—the view that irrespective of the additional burdens that we keep putting on business, we can have as many jobs as we currently have and perhaps even more. Such painless panaceas do not exist.