Browse regulations

The Loan Relationships and Derivative Contracts (Disregard and Bringing into Account of Profits and Losses) (Amendment) Regulations 2015 amend the 2004 Regulations concerning the tax treatment of loan relationships and derivative contracts. Key changes include: redefining 'fair value profit or loss' to align with accounting standards, inserting new regulation 5A prescribing exchange gains/losses for net investment hedges of foreign operations, amending rules on group transfers of derivative contracts (regulations 6B-6D), modifying regulations 7 and 9 on currency and interest rate contracts, and omitting regulation 9A on designated cash flow hedges. The regulations apply to accounting periods beginning on or after 1st January 2016.

This regulation is EU-derived law that creates unnecessary complexity and coupling between tax rules and accounting standards. The specific accounting treatments mandated (fair value measurement, hedge accounting designations, items of other comprehensive income) restrict corporate flexibility without clear economic benefit. The rules on group transfers of derivatives (regulations 6B-6D) impose procedural requirements that add compliance burden. Post-Brexit, Britain should simplify these rules rather than maintain EU-inherited accounting-driven tax regulations. Companies can determine appropriate tax treatment through self-assessment without this prescriptive framework.

The Loan Relationships and Derivative Contracts (Change of Accounting Practice) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2015 amend the 2004 Regulations concerning tax treatment of loan relationships and derivative contracts when companies change accounting practices. The regulations prescribe mandatory spreading mechanisms (5 or 10 years) for bringing debits and credits into account, introduce special IFRS 9 own credit risk treatment, and remove certain transitional date restrictions.

Mandates arbitrary government-prescribed spreading periods (5-10 years) for loss/gain recognition instead of allowing immediate recognition, creating compliance complexity and distorting business decisions. Removes important transitional date restrictions, expanding regulatory scope. Imposes compliance costs on financial institutions without clear benefit—companies should be free to recognize gains and losses immediately or according to their legitimate accounting policies. This is a remnant of EU-era rulemaking that adds regulatory burden without improving economic outcomes.

Amendment regulations updating the 2005 Loan Relationships and Derivative Contracts (Exchange Gains and Losses using Fair Value Accounting) Regulations. Primarily technical changes including: updated definitions referencing current Corporation Tax Acts (CTA 2009/2010) instead of Finance Act 1993; accounting terminology modernised (profit and loss account → accounts); added 'fair value through other comprehensive income' category; and various section reference updates to reflect restructuring of tax legislation.

This regulation represents the accumulation of EU-era tax complexity without democratic scrutiny. While technically 'merely updating references', it perpetuates a system linking accounting treatment to tax outcomes that distorts business decisions and creates compliance burdens. The retained EU law framework means these rules were never properly reviewed by Parliament. Deletion would force simplification and reduce the regulatory barrier to UK competitiveness in financial services, while the underlying policy goal (coherent tax-accounting alignment) could be achieved through primary legislation with proper scrutiny.

This Order of Council 2015 amends Miscellaneous Rules and Regulations of the General Medical Council, a statutory body regulating medical practitioners in the UK. The GMC controls medical licensing, registration standards, and disciplinary procedures. The Order came into force on 31st December 2015.

The GMC is a regulatory monopoly that restricts supply of medical services through licensing barriers, creating artificial scarcity that inflates medical costs and wait times. Professional licensing regimes uniformly reduce competition, protect incumbent practitioners' incomes at patients' expense, and use state power to enforce entry restrictions that have no demonstrated correlation with quality outcomes. The amendments to these rules further entrench this anti-competitive apparatus without evidence they achieve desired health outcomes more efficiently than market mechanisms or tort liability would provide.

This Order approves rules governing the General Medical Council's constitution of panels, tribunals and investigation committee. It establishes procedural frameworks for medical practitioner regulation, replacing four prior Orders from 2004-2010. The GMC is the statutory regulator of medical practitioners in the UK.

The GMC represents a classic regulatory monopoly that restricts competition in healthcare. As a guild-style professional body, it creates substantial barriers to entry, controls who can practice medicine, and imposes significant compliance costs on doctors. The panel and tribunal system, while ostensibly for patient protection, frequently operates with insufficient transparency and has been criticized for procedural delays and disproportionate outcomes. Such self-regulatory structures inevitably tend toward rent-seeking, protecting incumbent practitioners rather than genuinely serving patients. Patient protection can be achieved through alternative mechanisms such as tort liability, mandatory insurance, or lighter-touch oversight that does not concentrate coercive power in a closed professional monopoly. The 2015 consolidation of these rules perpetuates a costly, opaque system that raises healthcare costs and restricts supply of medical services.

These are the Representation of the People (Scotland) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2015, which amend the 2001 Regulations governing electoral registration in Scotland. The amendments make previous name provision optional for voter registration applicants (reducing data collection), introduce confirmation-of-registration requirements for successful applicants, substitute '31F' with '31FZA' for review procedures, add notification requirements for review outcomes, and make minor technical corrections to cross-references.

These amendments are administrative improvements to electoral registration that reduce burden in some respects (making previous name optional) while maintaining democratic integrity. The previous-name change particularly reduces data collection requirements. While new confirmation and notification procedures add some administrative work, they serve legitimate purposes: ensuring citizens know their registration status and understand appeal rights. Electoral registration is a core democratic function where some administrative burden is justified to maintain accurate registers and public confidence in elections. The changes do not impose significant economic costs, restrict trade, or distort market incentives in the way that would concern Mises, Hayek, or Friedman.

This Order approves rules governing the constitution and procedure of the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), the disciplinary arm of the General Medical Council. The MPTS conducts hearings to determine whether doctors are fit to practise and can impose sanctions including erasure from the medical register. The rules establish tribunal panel composition, voting requirements, and procedural matters for fitness to practise hearings.

The MPTS represents a regulatory monopoly controlled by the medical profession itself. Self-regulatory bodies inherently tend to serve the interests of the regulated profession rather than the public. These tribunal rules impose significant costs: doctors face substantial compliance burdens and defensive medicine incentives, while the GMC's near-monopoly on medical licensing restricts competition and supply of healthcare providers. Patients would be better served by a competitive regulatory environment with multiple accredited assessors, and doctor discipline could be handled through independent civil courts or competing professional bodies without a single mandatory tribunal structure. The regulatory protection against bad doctors could be achieved through private accreditation, insurance liability, and tort law without establishing a state-backed monopoly with compulsory jurisdiction.

The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (Amendment) Regulations 2015 amends the WEEE Regulations 2013, which implement EU Directive 2012/19/EU on waste electrical and electronic equipment. The amendment makes numerous technical corrections including: updating cross-references, modifying producer obligation requirements for non-UK established producers, adding new provisions for scheme member liquidation notifications, adjusting evidence note requirements for AATFs and exporters, clarifying compliance period calculations, and modifying approval processes for schemes and evidence note issuance. The regulations impose producer responsibility obligations, record-keeping requirements, and administrative burdens on businesses dealing in electrical equipment.

This amendment adds layers of administrative complexity to an already burdensome EU-derived regime without sufficient evidence of net benefit. It creates new notification requirements for scheme member liquidations, expands evidence note bureaucracy, and imposes compliance costs on producers that drive business abroad to less regulated jurisdictions. Post-Brexit, these retained EU laws deserve democratic scrutiny they never received. The producer responsibility model can be achieved through market mechanisms or less prescriptive regulation that does not dictate business structures and documentation requirements in such detail.

Transitional regulations governing the migration from the Armed Forces Redress of Individual Grievances Regulations 2007 to the new service complaints regime under the Armed Forces Act 2006. They create transitional categories (Part 2 and Part 3 complaints), map old procedures onto new ones, transfer responsibilities from the Service Complaints Commissioner to the Service Complaints Ombudsman, and preserve old complaint rights for pre-commencement complaints.

These are purely transitional savings provisions from 2015, designed solely to bridge the gap between the old 2007 complaints regime and the new one. By 2026, any pre-commencement complaints from before 1 January 2016 should be long since resolved. These regulations serve no ongoing purpose—they are regulatory deadwood that should have been repealed years ago once the transition period ended. The complexity they introduce (with Part 2 and Part 3 complaint distinctions, and numerous fiction-replacing provisions) adds unnecessary legal complexity with no corresponding benefit.

Amendment Regulations 2015 that came into force on 24th December 2015, which remove the criminal courts charge provisions (regulation 3 and the Schedule) from the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 (Criminal Courts Charge) Regulations 2015. This effectively abolishes the mandatory court charge levied on convicted defendants.

This amendment removes a regressive, mandatory charge that imposed costs on convicted individuals regardless of means or ability to pay. The original charge created perverse incentives, discouraged engagement with the justice system, and pushed already disadvantaged individuals into debt without corresponding benefit. Keeping this amendment preserves a deregulation that reduced burdens on those caught up in the criminal justice system. Britons are better off without this charge reinstated, as evidenced by its repeal after widespread criticism of its unfair implementation.

Amendment regulations to the Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001, making changes to electoral registration processes including: removing mandatory previous name requirements in certain cases; raising the age threshold for registration simplifications from 70 to 76; introducing new written confirmation requirements for successful applicants before publication; adding new notification requirements for review outcomes including appeal rights; and various technical amendments to cross-references and definitions.

These amendments improve the electoral registration process by reducing unnecessary burdens on applicants (removing mandatory previous name requirements), raising the age threshold for simplified processes (aligning with increased life expectancy), and most importantly establishing proper confirmation procedures that inform applicants of their rights and obligations. The new notification requirements for review outcomes ensure transparency and due process. While some aspects involve additional administrative requirements for registration officers, these serve legitimate democratic purposes: ensuring citizens know they are registered, understanding appeal rights, and maintaining accurate electoral rolls. Electoral integrity and citizen participation in democracy represent genuine market failures that require regulatory coordination.

The Alternative Dispute Resolution for Consumer Disputes (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2015 amend multiple UK statutes to modify limitation periods related to ADR, remove references to 'ADR official', and require competent authorities to provide links to the EU Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) platform. The regulations primarily affect Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

These regulations expand government-mandated dispute resolution infrastructure rather than reduce it. The ODR platform link requirement imposes ongoing bureaucratic obligations on competent authorities with no corresponding benefit—private businesses can voluntarily direct consumers to dispute resolution services. Removing 'ADR official' definitions and modifying limitation provisions across multiple statutes creates regulatory complexity without clear value. A free market in dispute resolution—where parties voluntarily choose arbitrators, mediators, or courts—would produce better outcomes than these compulsory ADR frameworks, which often favor established providers and add compliance costs for businesses, particularly SMEs.

Amends the Electricity Capacity Regulations 2014 by: (1) adding a definition of 'carbon capture and storage technology' referencing the Energy Act 2010, (2) modifying the 'relevant grant' definition to exclude grants for CCS research, development, or feasibility assessment from counting toward capacity market calculations, and (3) extending a compliance deadline in regulation 59(3) from 5 to 15 working days.

While the Capacity Market represents government intervention in energy markets, this amendment actually reduces distortion by explicitly excluding CCS R&D grants from calculations that could affect capacity payments or obligations. The 15-day deadline (up from 5) also eases compliance burdens compared to the original 2014 Regulations. Deleting this amendment would revert to a regime where CCS-related research grants could potentially distort capacity market participation decisions, and impose the shorter, more burdensome 5-day deadline.

Commencement order bringing into force sections 76 and 77 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 on 29th December 2015. Section 76 creates a criminal offence of coercive or controlling behaviour in an intimate or family relationship. Section 77 requires the Secretary of State to issue guidance about investigation of such offences.

This is a commencement order that merely exercises statutory authority to bring already-enacted provisions into force on a specified date. The substantive policy judgment was made by Parliament when passing the Serious Crime Act 2015. Criminal law protecting individuals from violence and coercion in relationships represents a legitimate core function of the state. The regulation imposes no economic or regulatory burden — it is an administrative instrument that activates protections against domestic abuse already established by primary legislation.

Amends the Insolvency Practitioners and Insolvency Services Account (Fees) Order 2003 to increase: (1) the fee for recognition of professional bodies under s.391 of the Insolvency Act 1986 from £4,500 to £12,000 (167% increase), and (2) the annual per-person fee for insolvency practitioners authorised by recognised bodies from £300 to £360 (20% increase). The per-person fee applies to those authorised as of 1st January 2016 and each subsequent year.

This regulation imposes substantial fee increases (167% on recognition, 20% annually per practitioner) that function as a hidden tax on professional bodies and insolvency practitioners. These costs will be passed through to debtors, creditors, and businesses requiring insolvency services. High recognition fees act as barriers to entry for professional bodies, reducing competition in a market already characterized by significant regulatory constraints. The fees fund the Insolvency Service's regulatory apparatus but do not demonstrably improve outcomes for creditors—evidence shows insolvency outcomes in the UK compare poorly with jurisdictions having lighter-touch regulation. Such fee hikes exemplify the cumulative regulatory burden that suppresses dynamic market outcomes and increases costs for businesses navigating financial distress.