The master of the rolls has called for fewer and more carefully drafted laws to avoid handing too much power to the judiciary.

Speaking at the annual conference of the Leasehold Advisory Service (LEASE) last week, Lord Neuberger (pictured) said: ‘Poorly drafted legislation risks giving more power to the judiciary, which is not necessarily very desirable.’

He said is also casts ‘opprobrium’ on the legislators and causes parliament to lose credibility, which allows other arms of government or the press to fill the vacuum.

‘Parliament has had a bad time in terms of public esteem and confidence over the past few years. Hopefully that will now be reversed,’ he said.

‘Badly drafted legislation results in the interpretation of statutes, which is the function of the courts, shading into rewriting statutes, which is legislating and not the function of the courts,’ he added.

Neuberger said that the parliamentary process should involve more careful scrutiny of draft statutes and avoid the ‘last minute cobbling together of amendments or additions’.

He said there had been a ‘welter of ill-considered criminal legislation passed with great fanfare and not implemented’, much of which has been repealed without ever being put into effect.

‘All the time that has gone into that would have been better spent drafting well-thought out and simple legislation which we’d all benefit from,’ he said.