Browse regulations

Amends the Trade Remedies (Dumping and Subsidisation) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 to modify the 'relevant period' for anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations. Allows the Trade Remedies Authority (TRA) to recommend these duties apply from dates specified in injury determinations, and allows duty amounts to be maintained at or below final determination levels during the relevant period.

These regulations perpetuate a protectionist trade remedy regime that raises prices for British consumers and downstream industries. Anti-dumping and countervailing duties are economically harmful tariffs that distort market signals, punish efficient foreign producers, and invite retaliation against UK exports. The underlying retained EU trade remedy framework represents exactly the bureaucratic burden Brexit was meant to address. While this amendment is technically minor, it strengthens a regime whose fundamental premise—government allocation of trade punishment rather than market competition—is incompatible with Adam Smith's free trade principles that made Britain great.

These 2023 Regulations amend the NHS (Joint Working and Delegation Arrangements) (England) Regulations 2022 by adding interpretation provisions, modifying joint working arrangements, and inserting regulation 3 clarifying that section 65Z5(1) powers do not apply to certain NHS Continuing Healthcare and NHS funded nursing care decisions. They include transitional provisions ensuring continuity for arrangements entered into between July 2022 and April 2023.

These regulations are administrative housekeeping that preserve existing delegation arrangements and clarify which NHS bodies can make certain healthcare decisions. Deletion would create legal uncertainty around ongoing joint working arrangements for NHS Continuing Healthcare assessments and could disrupt care provision for vulnerable patients. The regulations govern internal NHS administrative coordination rather than restricting private healthcare supply or creating market distortions.

These Regulations amend the Loans for Mortgage Interest Regulations 2017, which provide interest-bearing loans to help welfare recipients cover mortgage payments. Key changes include: reducing the qualifying period from 9 to 3 months; removing a waiting period before loan payments begin; extending eligibility to couples where one member receives State Pension Credit; and allowing UC claimants who regain entitlement within 6 months to avoid re-serving a qualifying period.

This regulation expands government welfare provision for housing, directly contradicting free-market principles. Reducing the qualifying period from 9 to 3 months increases dependency on state assistance for mortgage payments. Extending eligibility to couples and removing waiting periods draws more homeowners into government dependency. Such welfare programs distort housing market incentives, create moral hazard, artificially sustain demand for owner-occupation that would otherwise find market correction, and represent government picking winners in housing finance. The state has no business intervening in private mortgage arrangements between consenting parties.

Commencement regulations bringing into force provisions of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 related to a pilot Offensive Weapons Homicide Review scheme. Establishes a 9-month pilot (April-September 2023) in specific areas (South Wales, parts of London, Birmingham, Coventry) involving multi-agency reviews of relevant deaths, hate incident codes, and associated information-sharing arrangements between police, local authorities, and health bodies.

This is a limited, time-bound administrative pilot (9 months, specific geographic areas only) that facilitates inter-agency coordination on serious violence review—achieving information sharing between multiple public bodies that would be difficult to replicate contractually. Deletion would leave a gap in the operational framework without reducing any substantive regulatory burden on citizens or businesses.

These Regulations establish the Oil and Gas Authority's levy and fee framework for 2023/24, setting a total levy of £35,155,000 on licensees comprising production levies on offshore production licences and non-production levies on exploration and certain production licences. They include discount schemes for micro-enterprises (80-90% reductions), interest penalties for late payment (5% over Bank base rate), and amend the 2016 Fees Regulations to add new fee categories for carbon dioxide storage activities and petroleum extraction consents.

The OGA levy regime is a bureaucratic cost imposed on an industry that should function through market mechanisms. The £35m levy funds a regulator that controls access to petroleum resources through licensing restrictions—itself a significant government intervention that distorts investment decisions and restricts competition. The micro-enterprise discount schemes (80-90% reductions) create arbitrary preferential treatment that distorts market entry. Complex discount eligibility rules, joint-and-several liability for multi-person licensees, and punitive interest provisions (5% over base rate) add compliance burdens without clear justification. The amendments expanding fees for carbon dioxide storage and petroleum extraction consents extend regulatory control into new areas. As Friedman and Hayek recognised, such regulatory institutions tend to perpetuate themselves and expand their scope over time, adding cumulative costs that drive business elsewhere. Post-Brexit Britain should not maintain this level of intervention in the energy sector.

Consequential amendments and prescribed functions regulations made under the Building Safety Act 2022. They: (1) remove obsolete transitional provisions related to the old Building Regulations Advisory Committee by amending the Welsh Ministers (Transfer of Functions) Order 2009 and Freedom of Information Order 2010; (2) prescribe the Building Safety Regulator's functions as statutory consultee for fire safety matters in higher-risk buildings under planning legislation; (3) amend the Architects Act 1997 by omitting an outdated paragraph.

The amendments are primarily consequential cleanup of obsolete transitional provisions rendered redundant by the Building Safety Act 2022. The prescribed functions for the Building Safety Regulator as statutory consultee on fire safety for higher-risk buildings address genuine life-safety concerns in the planning process — without this designation, fire safety considerations for dangerous buildings could be bypassed. While the underlying Building Safety Act creates a new regulator (which raises broader concerns about regulatory expansion), these specific provisions merely operationalise statutory requirements and remove outdated references rather than imposing new regulatory burdens.

Sets 1st April 2024 as the valuation date for determining rateable values of non-domestic hereditaments for the next compilation of non-domestic rating lists in England. Comes into force 1st April 2023.

This is a purely procedural/administrative instrument establishing the valuation snapshot date for business rates. While business rates themselves are a distortionary tax on capital and property, this Order merely sets the date—its deletion would create administrative chaos with no rating lists able to be compiled. The regulation itself imposes no additional burden; it is a necessary administrative mechanism for an existing system, not a source of new regulatory成本.

These Regulations amend the Social Security (Claims and Payments) Regulations 1987 and the Universal Credit etc. (Claims and Payments) Regulations 2013 regarding fuel cost deductions from benefits. Key changes include: (1) replacing 'equal to' with 'not more than' for deductible amounts, providing flexibility; (2) inserting new consent requirements requiring beneficiary/claimant agreement before deductions can be made (except for reduction applications); (3) requiring applications to be made by the person/body to whom payment is due. The Regulations also revoke the 2022 Modification Regulations.

While these regulations govern deductions from social security benefits — an area where less government intervention would be preferable — these specific amendments actually improve the position of beneficiaries. The change from 'equal to' to 'not more than' limits deduction exposure, and the new consent requirements prevent deductions without beneficiary agreement (except for reductions). Britons would be worse off if deleted because removal would revert to potentially more aggressive deduction rules with fewer protections, removing the consent safeguard that prevents creditors from extracting unlimited amounts from vulnerable benefit recipients through government-enforced deductions.

Annual statutory instrument updating National Insurance Contributions rates, limits and thresholds for tax year 2023-24. Increases Class 2 contributions from £3.15 to £3.45, Class 3 from £15.85 to £17.45, raises lower profits threshold to £12,570, extends upper secondary threshold for freeport/veterans, and sets the prescribed National Insurance Fund payment percentage at 5%.

This regulation perpetuates a regressive payroll tax that acts as a employment barrier, particularly harming young workers, part-time workers, and the self-employed. The mechanical annual uprating of NIC thresholds removes these decisions from proper democratic scrutiny—Parliament merely approves Treasury formulae rather than debating tax rates openly. While this SI only adjusts parameters within an existing system, keeping it maintains the illusion that incremental NIC increases are technical rather than political choices. The combined employee-employer NIC burden distorts hiring decisions and erodes wage competitiveness. Each year's retention of NIC rate regulations normalizes taxation of labor as a matter of administrative routine rather than requiring fresh parliamentary justification.

Annual up-rating regulation adjusting working tax credit element rates, child tax credit maximum rates, income thresholds, child benefit rates, and guardian's allowance rates for 2023 to account for inflation and cost of living changes.

While beneficiaries would face reduced real incomes without these up-ratings, this regulation perpetuates a system of means-tested tax credits that Friedman would identify as creating perverse incentives — suppressing labor supply, rewarding dependency over work, and distorting market wages. The welfare trap inherent in steep benefit withdrawal rates (often losing £1 in benefits for every £1 earned) does more long-term harm than the temporary relief these up-ratings provide. A negative income tax or flat work incentive structure would achieve poverty alleviation without these structural distortions. The regulation should be deleted as part of a systematic reform toward a simpler, more liberty-enhancing welfare architecture.

These Regulations designate specific functions of English local authorities under the Care Act 2014 (including assessments, charging, meeting needs, direct payments, safeguarding, transition services, and advocacy) as 'regulated care functions' for the purposes of section 46A(2) of the Health and Social Care Act 2008, thereby bringing them under CQC regulatory oversight.

Extends regulatory oversight to local authority social care functions that are already governed by statute and democratic accountability. Local authorities are already bound by the Care Act 2014 duties; designating them as 'regulated care functions' subjects them to an additional layer of CQC regulation, creating duplicative compliance burdens without clear evidence of improved outcomes. This adds bureaucratic cost with no corresponding benefit—effectively gold-plating oversight on services already subject to legal requirements and political accountability.

Amendment to the Branded Health Service Medicines (Costs) Regulations 2018, adjusting payment percentages under the voluntary pharmaceutical price regulation scheme (PPRS). Increases the payment percentage from previously set rates to 27.5-28.6% for the applicable periods in 2023, with corresponding adjustments to reference dates for calculating net revenue. The scheme requires branded medicine suppliers to pay a percentage of their NHS sales revenue back to the NHS.

This regulation imposes a mandatory revenue repayment scheme on pharmaceutical companies supplying the NHS, effectively a stealth tax on the medicines industry. While presented as voluntary, it distorts the pharmaceutical market, creates administrative compliance burdens, and may discourage investment in UK medicine research. The NHS's near-monopoly purchasing position means these costs are ultimately passed to taxpayers anyway. More fundamentally, price controls and revenue caps on medical suppliers reduce supply incentives and can create shortages or restrict patient access to medicines, contradicting the goal of a dynamic healthcare market.

The Valuation for Rating (Coronavirus) (England) Regulations 2023 freeze rateable value determinations to reflect conditions as of 1 April 2021 regarding COVID-19 related factors, effectively ignoring how coronavirus legislation, provisions, and public guidance affected property valuations after that date. The regulation prescribes assumptions that COVID-related factors are to be treated as if they never changed from April 2021 levels when making relevant determinations for rating lists compiled on 1 April 2023. Exceptions exist for physical state of the property, locality, minerals, and waste materials.

This regulation distorts the rating system by artificially freezing property valuations to pre-COVID levels, creating cross-subsidies between ratepayers based on arbitrary COVID impact rather than actual property market values. It undermines the integrity of the rating system as a mechanism for reflecting true property values. As COVID-19 restrictions have largely ceased and society returned to normal by 2023, the rationale for this intervention has evaporated while the distortion persists. Such interventions should not become permanent fixtures in the rating system.

A minor statutory instrument that amends the Local Authorities (Capital Finance and Accounting) (England) Regulations 2003 by extending the application date for fair value gains and losses of pooled investment funds from 2023 to 2025. It extends to England and Wales and came into force on 31st March 2023.

This is a trivial date-extending amendment that adds no substantive regulatory value. It merely pushes an existing compliance deadline forward by two years. If deleted, the original 2023 date would simply be restored. The regulation itself does not reduce regulatory burden, create new restrictions, or improve market efficiency—it is purely an administrative timing change that could be achieved through the normal regulatory amendment process without requiring a separate statutory instrument.

Amendment Regulations 2023 updating Wireless Telegraphy Exemption Regulations 2021 and related Statutory Instruments. Updates OFCOM interface requirement document references from June 2021 to March 2023, adds definitions for 'MHz' and 'non-geostationary satellite', introduces restriction excluding non-geostationary satellites from fixed satellite service and earth station exemptions, revokes the 2011 ITS Regulations, and creates new exemption for Safety Related Intelligent Transport Systems in the 5875-5925 MHz band.

While the regulation updates outdated June 2021 references to March 2023 interface requirements and enables Safety Related Intelligent Transport Systems, these benefits are outweighed by significant concerns. The regulation adds restrictions against non-geostationary satellites for two exemption categories (high density fixed satellite service and earth stations in motion) with no technical justification provided—only that such satellites should be excluded. This 'not connected to a non-geostationary satellite' requirement appears to protect incumbent geostationary satellite operators from competition rather than serving any legitimate regulatory objective. Furthermore, the underlying licensing regime under section 8(1) of the Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006 remains unquestioned; these exemptions merely create exceptions to a system of prior restraint that should not exist in principle. Finally, the 'undue interference' standard throughout provides ambiguous and discretionary regulatory control that could be used to restrict beneficial deployment.