The Confederation was a political power that existed outside of the Mutter's Spiral.
History[]
TARDIS at the toll booth - Doctor Who - Delta and the Bannermen - BBC
The Doctor's TARDIS lands at Toll port G715. (TV: Delta and the Bannermen)
It erected toll ports throughout the galaxies, using the money to put up barriers against dangerous hyper-bypasses. Countless species used the Confederation's tolls, including the Solterns, the Giboks, the Wormese, the Navarinos, and the Tollmaster's people. Based on the paintwork of toll port G715, the Confederation was at least two thousand years old (PROSE: Delta and the Bannermen) as of 4687. (PROSE: TARDIS Cam)
A Confederation colony was established on Mekrom, a planet on the edge of known space. (COMIC: Echoes of the Mogor!)
Circa the eleventh millennium, (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel) although he later admitted he made some of it up, the Fifth Doctor told Sven Tornqvist that the Union was due to fall in under 100 years, to be replaced by the Junta, which would be replaced after 1000 years by the Confederation, which he said "wasn't a barrel of laughs." (PROSE: The Crystal Bucephalus)