AFAIK, In England & Wales, verbal contracts are non-existent, whilst in Scotland they do hold IF you can prove their existence. The difficulty is in proving that the verbal contract was made, which unfortunately is not possible in the vast majority of cases... As an example, a couple of years back I was offered a position at the end of an interview conducted by the MD of the company. He told me then and there he'd get a contract in the post that afternoon - of course he didn't! He then didn't answer my calls when I chased him up and when I finally did a month later, he claimed he'd never made such a promise, and hung up. Having pursued legal advice then, the problem was that I'd never be able to prove he'd made the offer... and I'd needlessly turned down other jobs. In short, this is why (in Scotland particularly), so many business conversations include the appended phrase "subject to contract". This voids any implication of a legally binding verbal contract. Hope this helps a bit, even though it's probably not what you wanted to hear.