The Ministry of Justice insists it is making progress in streamlining the criminal justice system despite adding 175 new offences during its first year in office.

In total the fledgling government department passed 33 new pieces of legislation in England and Wales in the 12 months ending May 2011. That was a significant reduction on the 92 statutes yielding 712 new criminal offences the previous year.

A MoJ spokesman said: 'We want to see greater transparency across the criminal justice system and stop the creation of unnecessary new criminal offences.

‘It is encouraging to see that in the first year of this government we substantially reduced the number of new offences created.’

The majority of new offences were created through the EU and internationally, with just 14% produced domestically.

In the UK, there was a slowing of the repeal of offences, down from 569 in 2009/10 to 155 the following year.

The figures have been released in the same week as Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge used his annual press conference to call for a decrease in the legislative burden.

On Tuesday he said: ‘The law relating to the criminal justice system has become astonishingly complicated, and I suspect that anybody working in any particular field will say the legislative process in the last 10 to 15 years has become increasingly complex – harder to understand and therefore more difficult to comply with.’