The European Union passes too many laws and "goldplating" by Whitehall makes EU laws even longer, the TaxPayers' Alliance has said.

The pressure group, which campaigns for lower taxes, said the EU had added an average of 942 new laws to the UK statute book each year since 1998.

These regulations were an "enormous burden to business" and Britain's relationship with the EU needed a "serious rethink", campaigners said.

In a report, the TaxPayers' Alliance said the Government used EU directives as "vehicles for their own policy agendas", attaching numerous additional clauses and extending their scope - a practice known as "goldplating".

The report - titled Brussels or Whitehall: Locating the Source of the UK's Regulatory Burden - found that there were currently 16,980 EU acts in force.

Campaigners said more than 23,000 new regulations were added to the British statute book between 1997 and 2003 alone - an average of nearly 15 per working day. Health and safety requirements doubled between 1980 and 2008, from 5,932 to 10,360.

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