The Telegraph report that the definitive guide to British laws has doubled in size over the last twenty years:
This is a crushing burden of new regulation. Ordinary people and businesses have an ever-expanding variety of laws that they are expected to obey. The vast complexity of the legal system is costly to comply with and hard to predict as people are unsure which of the million pieces of legislation they could fall victim to.
The problem is inexperienced political leadership. A lack of clear objectives leads to a mish-mash of many regulations that achieves little but complexity and inconvenience. Beyond that, politicians with little experience of the problems regulations create for private industry do not see the problems they create coming. Finally, they are only in office for a short period of time so are unable to really appreciate the vast amount of regulation that builds up over time with new legislation year after year.