Just spotted in "Classic Car Weekly" (which I have never looked at before, but it came free with Practical Classics) that DVSA have finally woken up and noticed that many people are flouting the law by fitting HID lights to vehicles for which they are not type approved. It was inevitable that this was coming. The date is 20th May. For those who don't need an MOT due to age, consider that prosecution and points on the licence is worse than a failed MOT, and they are already illegal on the road. Funnily enough, the DVSA advice, once again, is not in agreement with their own rules, and they seem to be suggesting that you can bolt in complete headlights with wash/wipe and self-levelling, just not change bulbs to HID, although that is disallowed as the headlights are only type approved as part of an actual vehicle. But that may just be journalistic mis-interpretation of what DVSA actually said.
Sadly at least one classic-friendly MOT tester fails to understand the problem. I would have expected better.
Coincidentally I heard elsewhere, including the BBC News web site, that the United Nations (who actually set lighting regulations, surprisingly) are looking at HID and other modern headlights, as there have been very many cases of dazzle, leading to accidents. So possibly in the next couple of years, the regulations may change again.
I would suggest that it would be prudent to wait a while to see what finally happens before thinking about changing headlights, except for the likes of the well-known and fully legal Cibie or Wipac upgrades.
Frankly I am sick of being dazzled in my daily driver, which is not as low as a Mini, by vehicles, mainly of German origin, with HID lights. I hope that they all need a horrendously expensive (to the manufacturer) recall to fix the lights once the UN decide what to do.