THE report that the Scottish Government had so far introduced not a single parliamentary bill since its re-election in May came to me as welcome news.

I stand in contrast to Maurice Golden, the gushing young Tory MSP who got his name in the papers for his statement on the subject (obviously this was a slow news day). He accused Nicola Sturgeon of twiddling her thumbs.

An odd thing that, as I always thought Tories to be instinctively opposed to too much legislation – certainly I held that view while I still was one, and it is among the range of my opinions not changed by my conversion to Scotland’s national cause. The gabby young Golden just fortifies my determination never to abandon it. Good legislation is better than hasty legislation.

Legislative activism is actually one of the curses of the modern state. If we doubt the wisdom of the Scottish Government in not resorting to it (at least between May and November this year), we need only look to the example of the UK and its 14,000 pages of laws relating to the various taxes in force at present. The Parliament at Westminster adds another few hundred pages every session. Apparently no part of any annual Finance Act is ever actually repealed, or at least not often. It is only amended or extended, or superseded by some clause of a future Finance Act.

Hence the pile of 14,000 pages. Few politicians, let alone members of the public, have much idea what lies within them, and it would be hard to find out because we would not know where to start looking. To deal with the problem, we have created a whole profession, chartered accountancy. This profession figures among Scotland’s gifts to the world: the first accountants’ society anywhere was founded in Edinburgh in 1854, followed by Glasgow in 1855.

At the time these fellows were harmless drudges, counting the corporate bawbees with the Scots’ customary care. Today they rule the commercial universe. Most British companies have chartered accountants as CEOs, and they have included men of the calibre of Fred the Shred at the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Foreigners find this peculiar. When Akio Morita, chairman of Sony, delivered Britain’s first innovation lecture, he said: “In Japan almost every major manufacturer is run by an engineer or technologist. Someone once mentioned to me that many UK corporations are headed by chartered accountants … this strikes me as very curious. I do not believe they should be at the helm of industry.” But these are the men now expected to lead us to the economic paradise of post-Brexit living.

It is a fine example of the rule of unintended consequences, first laid down by our own Adam Smith more than 200 years ago. If we had not had so much legislation, neither would we need to train all these people to understand it, nor then hire them to run our corporate sector with no thought for anything except the numbers it generates. Isn’t this the weakness of British industry in a nutshell? Garrulous young Golden should be careful what he wishes for.

In pleasing contrast to Westminster’s practice, the Scottish Government has set out to simplify the fiscal legislation it will inherit as its own system kicks in over the coming months. Good luck to everybody involved, but the initiative makes it all the odder how legislation in other departments has multiplied.

Since the Scottish Parliament was restored in 1999, it has passed 234 public bills, an average of 13 a year. These include the Dog Fouling Act 2003. Do you notice less poo on the pavements? Then there’s the Breastfeeding Act 2005. I have yet to see a woman exercising her right to nurse in public. I’ll concede something can be said for the smoking ban of 2005, which makes it more pleasant to spend a night in the pub (though not on the street right outside). The Edinburgh Tram Act 2006 must have been conceived by somebody full of malevolence towards the capital. The Climate Change Act 2009? I’m afraid you’ll need to wait till 2050 to see if that’s working. The Offensive Behaviour at Football Act 2012 has worsened, not improved, relations between police and fans.

And as for the British Sign Language Act 2015, perhaps Scotland should just let everybody use what language they like (which goes for spoken languages too).

The first thing to note is that a lot of these are knee-jerk measures: There is a problem, something must be done, let’s pass a law. If the law then passes in too much of a hurry, as knee-jerk measures by definition do, then you get a lot of bad law, and respect for the process on which the whole rule of law rests will be diminished. That is why the Scottish Parliament should repeal the Offensive Behaviour Act when it shortly gets the chance.

The second thing to note is how well our legislative history illustrates what political science calls capture theory, referring to the biggest change in western democracy since universal suffrage came in – not just here but all over the world.

What the theory refers to is that by hook or by crook, by fawning or wheedling, by back-slapping or glad-handing, a particular interest group is able to persuade a government that its own view represents the public interest and so should be favoured by some new law or regulation. It is the reason for the rise of another whole new profession, that of the professional lobbyist. The subsidies we have doled out to windfarms are the best example in Scotland.

A third thing is the scatter-gun approach, or taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut. For example, it is an article of feminist faith that Scotland is lax in the prosecution of rape. The supposed reason is not so much the difficulty of proving beyond reasonable doubt exactly what went on when, this being Scotland, both parties were often drunk. It is rather the test that Scots law imposes of corroboration, of always needing two witnesses to any criminal act.

Unfortunately the last justice secretary decided the quick way to deal with the problem was to abolish corroboration not just in cases of rape but in all cases whatsoever. He was stopped in time, luckily, but otherwise everybody in Scotland would have lost a basic human right.

And finally we suffer in Scotland from a general public conviction that there is nothing that lies legitimately beyond the scope of government, and that all its interventions will be benevolent, if not beneficent.

The prime current example is the Named Person scheme, now undergoing a rethink after an adverse ruling in the UK Supreme Court. The scheme assumes that, however stable and happy a family’s life, it will always be the better for having a representative of government sitting in on it.

I have great faith in Scotland’s ability to mature as a political community in the process of gaining more and more autonomy til the process is consummated on Independence Day. But we started off from a historical legacy burdening us with inexperience and irresponsibility, and excessive faith in the state because of lack of practice in working one. This extends right across the parliamentary spectrum, as we see in gassy young Golden. I would just advise him as he clamours for new laws – any laws really – that more often it is silence that is golden.