Yesterday I went along to the above conference organised by the legal publishers, Lexis-Nexis. It was a whole day set aside to discussing one of the most difficult and complex areas of UK law: the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 or TUPE for short. I always think that trying to get to grips with TUPE is a bit like trying to eat blancmange: just as you get a handle on it it slips through your fingers. Then you wonder why you bothered. Unlike blancmange, which has no purpose in life as far as I can see, TUPE is a very important and necessary thing. Without it, when one business takes over another all employees of the old business would be out of work because their contracts of employment would be “novated” by law. TUPE works to transfer the employee across to the new business and to make it automatically unfair to dismiss an employee for a reason related to the transfer.