"Voluntary" changes to Compulsory redundancy terms

I work for a UK Government-owned company and the current responsible minister has decided to wind up our company and wants all our work transferred into the private sector "in an orderly manner" by the end of March 2012. Our compulsory notice period is currently 6 months notice from the employer and 6 weeks pay per year of employment (terms retained from our civil service days). Our management claim they have negotiated a deal with the minister which preserves our 6 weeks pay terms but they wish us to reduce the notice period and agree to only 4 weeks notice - management claim they need this to comply and manage the "orderly" wind-down of the company. In addition, management say they do not want to enter full consultation with staff (still currently 1600) but instead are asking staff to sign up to "Voluntary" redundancy and relinquish our CR terms. They have only given staff a 2 week period in which to sign up to the "VR". After this period, management claim they will renegotiate the current CR terms with any staff who have not accepted the "VR" and management have stated (threatened) that any new CR terms will be less beneficial than current terms.
Q 1. If I sign up to "VR" do I loose my rights to the statutory minimal redundancy notice (I have 8 years employment, this would be 8 weeks statutory notice)?
Q2. If I am still entitled to a statutory minimum and my employer only gives me the 4 weeks notice under the "VR" which I signed, am I entitled to be paid for the remainder of my statutory period, i.e., another 4 weeks?
Q3. If I move with the work to a new employer under TUPE; does the new employer only need to give me 4 weeks notice or would the statutory minimum apply?
Q4. If I don't sign up to the "VR" can the employer enforce any new (and lesser) CR terms on me given that the decision to wind-up the company was announce back in December 2010?
Thanks

I assume that you are not in a union? If not, before I say anything else I am going to suggest that you (possibly with your collegaues to share the costs) get legal advice, because there is a certain amount of "lambs to the slaughter" about the questions and situation here, and what you are facing is a very serious loss of terms and conditions, which, since you are definitely going to be facing a redundancy situation, is a very realistic loss of cash in your pockets.

You cannot ever give up statutory rights - those laid down by legislation. What your managers are asking you to do is to give up contractual rights which are very substantially better than statutory rights, and I can see no logical reason why you should wish to do so. Your company is to close in March 2012. At that time, the work may transfer somewhere else, which may well constitute grounds for a TUPE transfer to the new employer with all your employment and contractual rights intact. If there is no TUPE (which is unlikely unless there is no transfer of the work and/or service) then you will be made redudnant. At this point in time you have the contractual right to 6 months notice and six weeks per year redundancy pay. There is no benefit to you in giving up any of this very generous entitlement - and there is no logical explanation why a reduced notice period (which could not be less than statutory entirlement anyway) will allow managers to better handle the transfer. It simply menas that they must provide a longer notice period than they would like.

Whilst it is possible for an employer to enforce a change to contractual terms, and that is almost certainly what they mean when they say that they will renegotiate the terms with anyone refusing to accept their initial proposal, it is not quite as easy as all that. This represents a substantial loss of contractual terms at a time when those contractual terms are very pertinant to the situation. In other words - you might be made redundant. In any case, to do so they would have to serve you your contractual notice, at which point you could immediately make a claim to a tribunal for breach of contract and unfair dismissal based on the fact that the employer is reneging on the contract.

On the face of what you are saying here, I can see utterly no reason other than giving in to threats for why you would wish to agree to this change, and I can see no reason why it is in your own interests to agree.

many thanks for your reply.
On the face of it, I can understand your point of view that we would be crazy to agree to the proposed VR. Would it make a difference to the situation if the company was broke and was being finacially supported by the Government and it has been implied to us that the Government will only pay our 6 weeks/year terms if the Minister gets his orderly transition that he's asked for? I have spoken with an advisor on the ACAS helpline who stated that affordability does not come into the situation. That may be the case, but if there is no money in the bank, where does the millions necessary come from to fund the redundency package? In our case, the money is from the state and this money appears to have strings attached.
I am a union member (Prospect) and I beleive they offer legal advice. Approx 60-70% of staff are in the union and they seem to think this is the best deal they could get.

You really do need to get your unions view on this. Affordability is certainly not the issue here - and I suspect that the issue is actually to reduce your terms and conditions before a TUPE transfer in order to make the pacakage for the new employer more attractive. Where the employer gets the money to fund the redundancy package is not your concern, it is theirs. But six months notice has to be paid for anyway - they have more than sufficient time to serve notice (if required) before March 2012, and since they are suggesting that the actual redundancy package is affordable, it matters not what the notice period is in terms of cost to them - serve notice now (if applicable) or in six months and the time between now and next March remains the same length! The length of notice is an administrative issue - not a cost one. This sounds like an excuse to undermine your rights before a TUPE - and I think that if I were handing away such rights I would expect something better than what I was already entitled to as a pay off.