It's manifesto week, but please stick us no more bills

Whatever Britain's problems, a shortage of laws isn't one of them. There is no popular call for extra legislation. We're drowning in the stuff. Parliament passed 30 bills in the 2009-10 session alone, 20 of them crammed through in a few hours last week before parliament was prorogued. If the Conservative party was brave, it would call a halt to this legislative sausage factory when it launches its manifesto this week. Politicians and journalists have become unhealthily accustomed to executive hyperactivity, mistaking a strategic grasp of the future for a carrier bag crammed with dotty plans. We want novelty, but ignore the consequences of imposing it on the public sector, business and individual citizens. Tories like to blame Labour (and especially Tony Blair) for the culture of the quick fix and crackdown, but governments have been at it for years. Plans are announced, laws are passed and few people ever go back to ask what they achieved. Large parts of many bills are never actually implemented by the department that created them (the home office is a particular offender in this). Yet politicians keep promising more. No doubt everyone will become obsessed with the government's achievements by the time it hits the first 100 days on August 14. The outcome is uniformly bad. New crimes are invented, yet the police find it hard enough to catch people committing old ones. Parliament, which should (to use a tired phrase) spend its time holding the executive to account, wastes hours semi-scrutinising bad bills. The reason lobbyists crawl all over Westminster is not that they find politicians charming people, but because they know MPs are forced to live to make laws. I encountered one exhausted Tory MP last week as he contemplated yet another vote on the digital economy bill (which left parliament as much of a dog's dinner as it began and will no doubt be done all over again, whoever wins). With a look of desperation, he said he disagreed with both sides, wanted to abstain, and had decided to head of to watch the musical Hair instead. He wasn't being lazy, but sensible. Most government activity should not involve primary legislation – Labour has fiddled with the NHS for 13 years with only one memorable bill, on foundation hospitals (and even that was passed for symbolic effect rather than because the change could not take place without a new law). All Conservative bills in the new parliament will hit trouble in a hung House of Lords where (for the moment) the Tories are not even the largest party. The public doesn't want new laws. So why is it in anyone's interest to pass them? In just over a month, when parliament returns, the Queen will arrive to make her speech. A Labour one would be full of legislation, much of it recooked versions of things we have already seen. A Conservative one, by contrast, should be focussed and radical. So here's a script for the Queen – not that I think she will be asked to deliver it: "My government has two priorities for the country and it will concentrate its energies on those before turning to other issues. A budget will be held shortly to bring the public finances under control and put the economy on a sustainable footing. An education bill will free schools from state control. Other bills, to repeal unnecessary legislation, will also be announced". And then the horses can be summoned and she could leave.