Labour's 3,000+ new laws.

The Mail seems to have got the title wrong, these 3,000 'new crimes' weren't just to catch out businesses.

The Law Commission said that during the past two decades, breaches of red tape that should have been dealt with by civil fines and bans had been elevated into crimes that affected millions of people and thousands of businesses

These crimes were, Mrs Rigby thinks, intentionally or not, a means of giving authority to power-hungry individuals - who then used these laws on ordinary folk who've never had so much as a parking ticket, and whose 'shame' at being handed an instant fine for a supposed misdemeanour (along with the threats of what would happen if the 'ticket' was challenged) would make them pay their 'fines' quickly and quietly, and without too much fuss. It means that everybody is indeed a potential criminal, even unwittingly, because few people would know all these laws and be able to avoid breaking at least one of them.

What this has also done is turn the due process of law (and law enforcement) on its' head. The individual who issues the 'penalty notice', and who often works alone, is prosecutor, judge and jury combined - and generally without even five minute's legal training.

Since Tony Blair came to power in 1997, the [Law] Commission said, more than 3,000 such crimes had been created.

New crimes brought in since 1989 fill three volumes of the criminal law record, Halsbury's Statutes of England and Wales, taking up 3,746 pages.

All the crimes established in the 637 years between 1351 and 1988 fill only one volume.

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