Chopperman
I stand ready to be corrected but I think you are wrong.
TUPE stands for Transfer of Undertaking Protection of Employment and IIRC is designed precisely to protect the employees when a company is outbid on contract renewal - otherwise the outside bidders could formulate a bid based on minimum wage for the task while the current contractor would be landed with a huge redundancy bill.
Applies to all sorts of undertakings - commonest demo is when the cleaner turns up in a different uniform one morning - different contractor, different contract, same staff.
Sven