UK got the backing of Germany to torpedo the draft Directive in return for the UK to help sink the Takeover Directive (Germany has comprehensive agency work regulation under its Arbeitnehmerüberlassungsgesetz and its Civil Code, esp §622, and the UK has strong Takeover Regulation, especially Rule 21 of the City Code). The significant difference between the proposed Directive and the Bill is that the former UK government managed to insert a 6-week qualification period in the Directive before the equal treatment rights click in (Art. 5(4)). The Bill has no proposed qualification period, though voices in the City have been calling for this to be one year. The latest reports suggest a 12-week qualifying period has been agreed between the private MP backers and the government, meaning a significant step back from the protection the Directive would offer. The Directive included equal treatment only pay, hours, parental rights and anti-discrimination (Art. 3(1)(d)). A significant omission therefore was any regulation on reasonable notice before dismissal (in the UK, ERA s.86; Germany has this for all workers already, regardless of their agency status, §622 BGB). Before the 2005 United Kingdom general election, the trade unions and the government made the so-called Warwick Agreement (after its signing place, the University of Warwick). This included a promise on the government's part to reverse its opposition to the European Directive. But by 2007, the government was yet to deliver, and Paul Farrelly MP introduced the Temporary and Agency Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Bill. It mirrored the Directive in all respects, save that there would be no 6-week qualifying period. In that period's climate, the Bill did not gain enough attention and was talked out of time. In the Court of Appeal case James v. Greenwich LBC which further entrenched the subordinate position of agency workers, Mummery LJ pronounced it "doomed to failure for lack of support from the Government". But no sooner as that had been said, almost exactly the same Bill was reintroduced by Andrew Miller MP, with a small title change to emphasise "Equal Treatment" rather than "Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment". Identical in every way, save a tighter definition of employment agency and more provision for regulatory enforcement, it won the support of almost the whole Labour bench in the House of Commons. It was being heard in Committee each Wednesday morning as from 7 May. As of 21 May,