Parliament should take a greater role in assessing whether the laws it passes do what they are supposed to, a wide-ranging review has found.

It also concluded that the UK legal system needs a more structured practice for reviewing laws once they have been put in place.

The Law Commission report said that under the current system there is only "ad hoc post-legislative scrutiny" and no proper mechanism for ensuring that laws are working as intended.

The commission, an independent body set up by parliament to keep English and Welsh law under review and recommend reform where needed, carried out a three-month consultation on the issue earlier this year.

It looked into the potential for developing a more formal system for reviewing laws and encouraging better regulation.

The full findings of the consultation are being presented to parliament on Wednesday and suggest that a new joint parliamentary committee on post-legislative scrutiny be set up to monitor new laws.

Chairman of the commission Sir Terence Etherton said there had been "overwhelming support" for the principle that there should be a more systematic approach to post-legislative scrutiny and that the process for such scrutiny should be controlled by parliament.

"The background is that every year there are over 10,000 pages of new legislation introduced - in terms of primary and secondary legislation," he told ePolitix.com.

"If you add European directives and regulations, the figure is doubled.

"There is an increasing need to reflect on the effect of all these new laws to see if they are working as intended and if they are not, to discover why not.

"This will allow lessons to be learnt to ensure that future legislation achieves its objectives in the most cost-effective way." 

He outlined the main benefits of post-legislative scrutiny as checking that legislation is working as intended; contributing to better regulation; improving the focus on implementation and delivery of policy aims; and identifying and disseminating good practice.

As well as a new joint parliamentary committee, the Law Commission has suggested ways in which there could be greater commitment to post-legislative scrutiny by government departments, building on mechanisms already in place including enhancing regulatory impact assessments for this purpose.

"Regulatory impact assessments (RIAs) provide a good place for the clarification of policy objectives and setting out of criteria for monitoring and review," Sir Terrance said.

"We suggest that RIAs should be enhanced in order to incorporate these considerations more effectively.

"Furthermore, departments should give routine consideration to whether and if so how legislation will be monitored and reviewed."