Law, unlike love, is not something that makes the world better the more we have of it. A society that becomes awash with law is one that makes life difficult for citizens, companies, organisations and lawyers. More law does not mean more justice.

The Companies Act 2006 has now been given Royal Assent. It would be difficult to describe it as a concise piece of law. It begins, simply enough, with a section 1 called "Companies". But 760 pages later, by the time one gets to section 1,297 (called "Continuity of the law"), it is evident that the legislation is far from straightforward.

The final section, number 1,300, is encouragingly called "Commencement", but even that is not the end of the matter. Much of this new Act will not get proper colour and texture until the courts have interpreted it; the word "commencement" does not really mark a clear and fresh beginning.

The Government has yet more plans for substantial legislation in the year ahead. We shall get the 11th education bill since 1997, the 12th health and social care bill, the eighth terrorism bill and the 24th criminal justice bill.

Speaking in Parliament last month, Sir Menzies Campbell said the Government and the Prime Minister "suffer from a statutory addiction". Since 1997, Labour has passed 365 Acts of Parliament and more than 32,000 statutory instruments. In the last ten years, over 3,000 new criminal offences have been legislated. Those were added to over 8,000 already in the law books. We need to live by more than a short code like the Ten Commandments, but if you were asked by a child why we need a criminal code ranging over 11,000 different wrongs, could you give a satisfactory answer?

There is now a good case for a regular and fully professionalised system for the repeal of stale and cluttering legislation across all types of law.

In his book Utopia, published in 1516, Thomas More, later to be Lord Chancellor, wrote of a world with a minimal legal code, and where all law was simple enough for any citizen to be able to interpret it without any expertise. It would be a challenge, indeed, for the modern, complex, industrialised world to operate on such a basis but that doesn’t mean that the law should not be shorter, clearer and more accessible than it is today.

The complaint that we have too much law is not new. In 1600, the lawyer William Fulbeck lamented "the ocean of reports, and such a perplexed confusion of opinions". The difference is that all the law governing someone in Britain in 1600 could be fitted on a few shelves and read in a few years. Today it would take the average adult, assuming mortality could be suspended, over 400 years to read all the law applicable in Britain. And even legal academics would say that would be a weary waste of a long life.

Professor Gary Slapper is the Chair in Law at the Open University