Public Bodies Bill [HL]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Turner for her points underlining the issue of uncertainty that surrounds so many employees in these organisations and beyond at the moment. I am also grateful to the Minister for stating pretty clearly the Government’s commitment to the TUPE principles and to continuing to apply COSOP where that is the relevant coverage. I was slightly more dubious about the last two or three paragraphs. There is a slightly schizophrenic nature to the Minister's response. I do not know whether two people drafted his speech for him, as he carefully said at the beginning. On the one hand, there is that very clear commitment, which I appreciate. It is an important message for the Government to get out there. There were then references to flexibility in situations which hitherto may well have been regarded as transfers. I accept that some fine-tuning of TUPE is necessary and helpful, provided that that is done individually or collectively with the employees concerned. The situation where neither TUPE nor COSOP applies probably requires one-off handling. However, if the principle is that the main principles of TUPE will be held to apply unless there is a good reason why they should not, I would rather have heard a speech from the Minister in those terms—that the default position is that TUPE should apply. However, clearly I am not going to get a lot more from the Government on this one; I think that I have done quite well over the previous stages of the Bill. I suspect that there will be some work for our learned friends in some of these areas, and I hope that the good will extended by the Minister at the beginning of his speech and the commitment to the TUPE principles that he reflected here will in practice be reflected in the proposals for the individual organisations and the approach that the individual departments take when we are drawing up the regulations to implement these parts of the Bill. I thank the Minister. I am not entirely satisfied, and I suspect that some people outside will not be either, but I will not press this today. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 5 withdrawn. Schedule 1 : Power to abolish: bodies and offices Amendment 6 Schedule 1 : Power to abolish: bodies and offices Amendment 6 Moved by