I HAVE been feeling a heavy burden upon me this week. And the source of my burden was the unlikely figure of Elfyn Llwyd, the Plaid Cymru MP for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy.

Mr Llwyd told the Prime Minister that Labour had created more than 700 offences since coming to power. That thought lingered with me. 700? In eight years? Parliament sat for 1,228 days between 1997 and 2005; so 1.75 new offences were created each day that MPs were at Westminster.

This was a bumper week, with the Terrorism Bill introducing an impressive 30 fresh offences. But what are these hundreds of others? Mark Oaten, the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesman, reckons that Tony Blair has actually totted up more than 1,000 new criminal offences since 1997. Well, what's a few hundred between fellow suspects.

It would be easy to fall foul of some of them: obstruction of a fire hydrant, for instance, which became an offence last year and carries a £500 fine.

Others are more bizarre. “Provision of incorrect information by a plant breeder to the Controller of Plant Variety Rights”, created by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in the Plant Varieties Act 1997, carries a maximum £1,000 fine.

The Department of Health has overseen the creation of 72 crimes, including a whole swath in the Human Tissue Act 2004. Under the Nurses, Midwives and Health Visitors Act 1997, it became an offence “for a person other than a registered midwife or a registered medical practitioner to attend a woman in childbirth,” with a maximum penalty of £2,500. Squeamish husbands might like to file that for future use.

According to figures collected by Mr Oaten, by far the biggest offender is the Home Office, which oversaw the creation of 367 offences between 1997 and 2004. But the Department for Culture, Media and Sport created 76, the Treasury 44, and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister 62.

Shouldn’t there be a rule that for every criminal offence created, one must be abolished?

• David Blunkett has been given a few weeks’ grace before leaving the grace-and-favour home in Belgravia he has occupied for four years. When he last resigned, 11 months ago, Tony Blair let him keep the flat, knowing he would be back in government soon. It must be hard for a blind man to move house. Presumably there are plenty of adaptions to make a place safe. I don’t begrudge Mr Blunkett a few weeks, or even months, extra, in his government home.

  What I do begrudge is that, while he has been occupying the free flat, he has rented out his own home in South London and simultaneously used a parliamentary allowance, from which he claimed £20,608 last year, designed to help MPs to fund the cost of a second home in London.

  He has also been paid two tax-free ministerial severance payments of £18,725 each, in under a year. This is paid in order to help former ministers to stick to the rule that they should not take another job for three months, a rule we know that Mr Blunkett breached, and yet he still intends to take the second payment.

  He also owns a house in Sheffield and rents a cottage in Derbyshire, and as a former Home Secretary may be allowed to keep his chauffeur-driven ministerial car. I don’t think we need feel too sorry for him.

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