The Agency Workers Regulations 2010 (SI 2010/93) are a statutory instrument forming part of United Kingdom labour law. They aim to combat discrimination against people who work for employment agencies, by stating that agency workers should be no less favourably treated in pay and working time than their full-time counterparts who undertake the same work. It gives effect in UK law to the European Union's Temporary and Agency Workers Directive. Background The AWD 2010 was the culmination of a succession of attempts to get rights for agency workers. A previous proposal, the Temporary and Agency Workers (Equal Treatment) Bill 2008, was introduced in the British parliament, designed to secure equal pay and terms for working time between vulnerable agency workers and their permanent staff counterparts. It has now been superseded (though is in all material respects identical) by the Temporary and Agency Workers Directive (2008/104/EC), which the UK was required to implement by December 2011 at the latest. It was introduced by a private member, Labour backbencher Andrew Miller MP and would have formed an important part of the United Kingdom agency worker law, and an addition to the growing categories of employment discrimination law in the UK. The Bill's substance is modelled on a proposed European Directive, which has been blocked by the UK government since 2002. However the government has recently indicated that it will introduce a modified version of the Bill, through a statutory instrument under the European Communities Act 1972 to implement the TAW Directive, with a 12-week (3-month) waiting period before agency workers will get equal pay and working time conditions. The bill has been supported by a majority of the Labour Party, and trade unions, and vigorously opposed by the Conservative Party and the CBI. The calls for legislation have been bolstered by the particularly vulnerable position of people who work for agencies. They lack almost all of the rights guaranteed for normal workers from the Employment Rights Act 1996. However the legislation does not seek to make any but minor alterations for the position of agency workers on this front. The Bill is modelled, more or less directly, on the proposals put forward by the European Commission for a draft Temporary Agency Worker Directive (COD 2002/0149). This proposal was itself shelved, because of the UK government's consistent opposition to agency regulation, in the interests of labour market flexibility. According to newspaper reports, the