In a year that parliament only sat for 153 days, it is an impressive record. Data from legal information provider Sweet & Maxwell showed that the number of laws introduced by the government during the last year rose by 16% to 2,492, up from 2,148 in the previous 12 months – 98% of which were introduced as statutory instruments without full parliamentary debate.

“There does tend to be a spike in new legislation following an economic crisis. There is pressure to introduce new laws to deal with the fall out from the recession and to try and tackle the causes of the crisis,” said Alina Lourie, director of Enterprise-Wide Solutions at Sweet & Maxwell.

“Try” being the operative word. Unfortunately, overwhelming deficits and loose monetary policy aren’t likely to be resolved by legislative easing after the fact.