28 bills lighter? Comparing the 'zombie parliament' to previous sessions

The legislative programme set out in today's Queen's Speech has been described variously as "relatively light" or even "exceptionally light" by commentators.

It comes less than a month after the government denied accusations that it is at the helm of a "zombie parliament" lacking in legislation.

So how does its record compare to that  of previous parliaments?

Although we can't know how many new laws the government will pass in total - there is still a year left to go of this parliament - we can use figures compiled by the Institute for Government (IfG) to compare the number passed from 2005 to the present day.

Its analysis showed the number of bills passed has been relatively consistent since 2006, with somewhere between 20 and 30 being passed per year. The number passed in the first session of the current government is higher because the session lasted two years.

Of course, the numbers of laws passed isn't the only measure of parliamentary productivity. It isn't even the only measure of legislative productivity; the IfG analysis also looked at the number of pages of legislation passed in each session, and the amount of legislation passed on each day sat in Parliament.