Browse regulations

The Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations 2020 establish a framework for designating and imposing asset freezes, director disqualification sanctions, and immigration restrictions on individuals involved in serious human rights violations (including torture, slavery, and extrajudicial killing) wherever committed. The regulations enable the Secretary of State to designate persons under standard or urgent procedures, require Treasury licences for activities involving frozen funds/economic resources, and include exceptions for certain required payments and legitimate business activities.

These targeted sanctions against individual human rights violators (torturers, human traffickers, perpetrators of extrajudicial killings) serve essential purposes that cannot be achieved through market mechanisms alone. Deletion would: (1) remove accountability mechanisms for serious human rights abusers operating globally; (2) eliminate the deterrent effect on future violators; (3) sever coordination with allied nations (US, EU, Australia, Canada) who have corresponding sanctions, creating enforcement gaps; (4) strip UK authorities of tools to restrict assets of those responsible for torture and modern slavery. Unlike broad economic regulations that distort market incentives, these are narrow, targeted measures focused on identifying and sanctioning specific bad actors. The compliance burden falls on financial institutions processing transactions involving designated persons, which is a proportionate cost relative to the objective of deterring torture, slavery, and extrajudicial execution.

These regulations, effective 6th July 2020, amended the Statutory Sick Pay (General) Regulations 1982 to expand SSP eligibility during the coronavirus pandemic. They added a new category (d) for persons 'shielding themselves' to prevent infection, created Schedule 2 outlining shielding requirements, defined terms like 'extended household' and 'linked household' across UK jurisdictions, renumbered existing provisions, and updated references to connect with prior 2020 SSP coronavirus amendments.

These pandemic-era regulations imposed additional mandated sick pay costs on employers during an extraordinary crisis. While temporary measures may have been justified in 2020's unique circumstances, they should not remain permanently on the statute book. The regulations: (1) expand government-mandated labor costs that discourage hiring, (2) encode pandemic-specific household definitions into permanent law rather than allowing them to sunset, and (3) layer new SSP eligibility categories on top of existing mandated benefits, increasing employer burden. Post-Brexit regulatory independence should focus on reducing, not maintaining, such employer mandates. These provisions should be repealed as the public health emergency has passed.

These 2020 Regulations amend multiple existing UK regulations governing the marketing of seeds, plants, and propagating material in England. They implement definitions for the EU Plant Health Regulation, establish requirements for Union quarantine pests, protected zone quarantine pests, and regulated non-quarantine pests (RNQPs), require visual inspections and reporting to inspectors for pest presence, and set standards for crop and seed quality. The regulations cover vegetable plant material, ornamental plant propagating material, seed marketing, seed potatoes, and fruit plant material.

While these are retained EU laws that warrant review, deletion would create a regulatory vacuum. Plant pests pose genuine risks to agricultural productivity and food security. However, this verdict assumes a future government would conduct proper cost-benefit analysis and simplify requirements to target only significant pest risks, removing gold-plating and reducing compliance burdens on small producers. The visual inspection requirements are low-cost and provide reasonable assurance; the reporting obligations help contain pest outbreaks. Without replacement regulations developed through proper democratic process, deletion would harm Britons by leaving no functional system for managing plant health risks in the seed and plant marketing sector.

Amends seven social security regulations (Income Support, Jobseeker's Allowance, State Pension Credit, Housing Benefit, Housing Benefit for pensioners, Employment and Support Allowance, and Universal Credit) to extend income-related benefit eligibility to family members of 'relevant persons of Northern Ireland' who would have had rights under EU regulations but for Brexit. Introduces new definitions for EEA national, family member, and relevant person of Northern Ireland, and creates exemptions from 'persons from abroad' restrictions for certain family members.

While these regulations expand welfare state provision, deleting them would cause immediate and severe hardship to vulnerable individuals and families who planned their finances around these benefits. Family members of Northern Ireland residents would lose access to means-tested support for housing, unemployment, and income support. The regulation corrects a gap created by Brexit that would otherwise leave this group worse off than under EU law. Deletion would not reduce welfare dependency overall but would simply transfer costs to families, charities, and local authorities while causing genuine poverty.

The European Union (Regulated Professions Proportionality Assessment) Regulations 2020 required UK authorities to carry out proportionality assessments before implementing new professional regulatory provisions. The regulations set criteria for assessing whether such provisions were justified, non-discriminatory, suitable, and not beyond what was necessary to achieve public interest objectives. They explicitly ceased to have effect immediately before IP completion day (the end of the Brexit transition period), making them a time-limited transitional measure.

This regulation was a Brexit transitional measure that automatically expired at IP completion day. It imposed EU-derived bureaucratic assessment requirements on professional regulation that constrain democratic regulatory authority. The regulation was designed to maintain alignment with EU Directive 2005/36/EC during the transition period and has no ongoing effect. Post-Brexit, Britain should not maintain regulatory frameworks borrowed from EU law, particularly those that require sending assessment results to the European Commission and recording in EU databases.

Amends the School Teachers' Incentive Payments (England) Order 2019 to substitute/include the Early-Career Payments Pilot within article 2(2) regarding incentive payments to school teachers. Comes into force 1st September 2020.

While well-intentioned, this represents government manipulation of teacher labor markets through targeted cash incentives. Such pay supplements distort price signals, create artificial mobility patterns as teachers chase incentives rather than serving students where most needed, and establish precedent for further intervention in teacher compensation. The Early-Career Payments Pilot was likely retained from EU-era schemes and perpetuates a top-down approach to teacher recruitment that the free market would handle more efficiently through natural salary differentiation.

COVID-19 international travel regulations for England, requiring self-isolation for arrivals from non-exempt countries/territories, with exemptions for various worker categories including transport workers, maritime personnel, elite sportspersons, and film/TV production workers. Implemented exemption categories, public health information requirements, and 28-day review periods for restrictions.

These emergency COVID-19 regulations from 2020 imposed travel restrictions and mandatory self-isolation that were never subject to proper democratic scrutiny. The detailed exemptions for specific industries (elite sportspersons, film/TV production, tunnel workers, maritime personnel) represent government picking winners rather than neutral rules. By 2026, the pandemic emergency has passed, yet these restrictions continue to distort travel markets, harm the hospitality and tourism sectors, and impose compliance costs on businesses. The exemption framework particularly benefits well-connected industries while ordinary travelers face burdensome requirements. The regulation's core mechanism (mandatory self-isolation based on travel origin) has no historical precedent in British law and was imported during the COVID emergency without adequate cost-benefit analysis.

Post-Brexit amendment transferring aviation insurance rulemaking powers from the European Commission to the Secretary of State for Transport, and removing EU enforcement, delegation, and committee procedure articles. Comes into force immediately before IP completion day.

This regulation merely substitutes 'Secretary of State' for 'Commission' and removes EU administrative provisions — it preserves the underlying insurance requirements without liberalizing them. The original EU Regulation 785/2004 imposed mandatory insurance obligations on air carriers and aircraft operators that increase operating costs. Post-Brexit, the UK has retained these burdens rather than abolishing them. This is regulatory continuity masquerading as sovereignty restoration; true free-market reform would have abolished or significantly reduced these insurance mandates rather than simply transferring administration from Brussels to Whitehall.

The Pension Protection Fund (Moratorium and Arrangements and Reconstructions for Companies in Financial Difficulty) Regulations 2020 transfer creditor voting rights from pension scheme trustees to the PPF Board during company moratoriums (Part A1 Insolvency Act 1986) or compromise/arrangement proceedings (Part 26A Companies Act 2006). The Board may exercise rights under section A12 (creditor consent) and section A44(4)(c) (challenge to directors' actions) of the 1986 Act to the exclusion of trustees during moratoriums, and may exercise and exclusively vote on meeting rights under section 901C during reconstructions. The Board must consult trustees before exercising these powers.

This regulation centralises creditor rights from private pension trustees to a government body (the PPF Board), overriding contractual arrangements between parties. The mandatory exclusion of trustee voting rights removes their ability to independently negotiate and vote on restructuring terms that directly affect pension obligations. This creates moral hazard by insulating trustees from monitoring incentives, since the PPF will act in their place. The regulation constrains market discipline that would otherwise encourage employers to properly fund pension liabilities. While protecting the PPF's financial position, it does so by substituting government-mandated intervention for voluntary creditor negotiations, reducing flexibility in restructuring processes and shielding companies from full consequences of underfunded pension promises.

This SI amends two EU regulations (2017/373 and 2019/123) to operationalize them for post-Brexit UK. It transfers competent authority functions from EU bodies (EASA, Network Manager) to the CAA and Secretary of State, replaces Member State references with UK authorities, removes EU-specific mechanisms (Network Manager, functional airspace blocks), and substitutes references to EU performance schemes with the Transport Act 2000 framework.

While this regulation inherits the EU's bureaucratic approach to air traffic management, deleting it would create a dangerous regulatory vacuum. Aviation safety requires standardized certification, oversight, and coordination mechanisms. The UK's airspace handles 2 million flights annually with complex coordination requirements. Without this framework, there would be no clear competent authority for certification, no oversight structure, and no legal basis for air traffic service provider regulation. The minimal substitutions (CAA for EU Agency, Secretary of State for Member States) preserve functional continuity needed for safe operations. Replacing this with nothing would harm Britons through increased safety risks and coordination failures.

UK statutory instrument amending the Electricity Capacity Regulations 2014 to provide exemptions for pre-existing capacity agreements from new requirements, and omitting regulations 26 and 35 from the Electricity Capacity (No. 1) Regulations 2019 (Secretary of State's discretionary modification powers), in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

These regulations perpetuate the Capacity Market regime, a government intervention mechanism that distorts the electricity market by guaranteeing revenue to generation capacity regardless of actual need. Rather than addressing the fundamental problem of state-mandated capacity procurement, this amendment merely tinkers with the edges. The discretionary powers being removed were themselves symptoms of over-complex regulation. A genuinely free-market energy system would eliminate capacity subsidies entirely, allowing prices to signal genuine supply adequacy and allowing the market to determine optimal capacity levels without political meddling.

Extends zero-rate VAT on personal protective equipment (PPE) used for coronavirus protection from 31st July 2020 to 31st October 2020, responding to the COVID-19 pandemic emergency.

During an acute public health emergency with severe PPE supply disruptions, removing zero-rate VAT would increase costs for healthcare workers and reduce PPE uptake at the precise moment when protecting front-line workers was critical to preventing healthcare system collapse and saving lives. While temporary tax interventions can create market distortions, the harm of higher prices during this specific crisis—where supply chains were disrupted and demand was surging globally—would outweigh normal objections to fiscal interventionism.

These Regulations establish a voluntary exemption scheme allowing participating schools to temporarily opt out of certain Early Years Foundation Stage learning and development requirements (Sept 2020-Aug 2021), substituting them with an alternative 'Early Adopters' framework. The Secretary of State may grant directions exempting schools from sections 1 and 2 of the statutory Document, subject to conditions including cooperation with the Department for Education and submission of assessment data. The Regulations also amend the Childcare (Exemptions from Registration) Order 2008 to clarify exemption scope.

These Regulations reduce regulatory burden on participating schools by allowing them to pilot an alternative early years framework rather than the standard Document. The scheme is voluntary, time-limited, and actually represents a step toward deregulation by creating space for innovation before full rollout. Removing this would leave participating schools subject to prescriptive EU-derived requirements with no pathway for reform pilot. The data submission conditions are minimal and necessary for evaluating the pilot's success.

The Mali (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 implement UN Security Council Resolution 2374 and replace retained EU sanctions on Mali post-Brexit. They empower the Secretary of State to designate individuals and entities for asset-freezes, director disqualification, and immigration restrictions. The regulations prohibit making funds or economic resources available to designated persons and include exceptions for humanitarian activities and certain required payments. The stated purposes include promoting peace, stability, and human rights in Mali.

Economic sanctions are a form of trade control that distort market forces, create black markets, and impose compliance costs on legitimate businesses. They ultimately harm ordinary Malian civilians more than targeted elites. These controls restrict voluntary transactions between UK persons and Malians, reducing trade and economic activity. The regulation perpetuates inherited EU bureaucratic structures without sufficient evidence of effectiveness. A truly free-trading Britain would not maintain such extensive economic controls on another sovereign nation.

The Norfolk Vanguard Offshore Wind Farm Order 2020 is a Development Consent Order (DCO) granted under the Planning Act 2008 for a major offshore wind farm project off the Norfolk coast. It authorizes: the construction of wind turbine generators (Work Nos. 1-2), offshore electrical platforms (Work No. 3), export cables (Work No. 4A/4B), onshore cable works (Work Nos. 4C-10), a National Grid substation extension (Work No. 11), and overhead line modifications (Work No. 11A). The Order grants compulsory acquisition powers over land, contains deemed marine licences, imposes 27 requirements (conditions), and allows the undertaker to transfer or grant benefits to other persons subject to Secretary of State consent. It also contains extensive exemptions from Environmental Permitting Regulations, Water Resources Act byelaws, and Land Drainage Act provisions for construction works.

This Order grants a government-created monopoly to a single developer (Norfolk Vanguard Ltd, a Vattenfall subsidiary) for a specific offshore site, effectively preventing competitive alternatives. The compulsory acquisition powers under articles 18-20 constitute corporate welfare, enabling a foreign state-owned utility to seize British land and property rights. The extensive regulatory exemptions from environmental law (Environmental Permitting Regulations, Water Resources Act, Land Drainage Act) reveal this as a legislative vehicle to circumvent normally applicable protections. The extensive 'certification' requirements for dozens of outline plans create a regulatory barrier that only large incumbents can navigate. Rather than allowing market forces to determine optimal energy infrastructure locations and technologies, this Order picks winners based on political considerations, distorting investment signals across the energy sector. Post-Brexit regulatory independence should mean removing such privileges, not retaining them.