The Blair years: new law passed every three hours

In his ten years as Prime Minister, Tony Blair has introduced a new law every three-and - a - quarter hours, new research reveals.

Since 1997, an average of 2,685 laws have been passed every year - a 22 per cent rise on the previous decade.

They have covered subjects ranging from the importing of bed linen to the evaluation of statistics on labour costs.



The figure does not include European Union laws which also affect Britain - last year, 2,100 of those were passed, bringing the total to 4,785 or 13 every day, according to legal publishers Sweet & Maxwell.

Shadow Cabinet Office minister Oliver Heald said: "Tony Blair and Gordon Brown think the answer to everything is to make a new law."

A No.10 spokesman said: "The Government makes no apology for legislating where necessary to improve the lives of people in this country."