A WORKINGTON peer has called for an new independent body to be created - following an increase in sightings of toxic blue-green algae across Cumbria.

Former Workington MP Dale Campbell-Savours raised the issue during a debate in the House of Lords which questioned the government on what plans they have to maintain their commitments to water quality - currently provided for in retained EU law such as the Water Framework Directive.

Lord Campbell-Savours suggested a new national water pollution control authority to be set up. He believes lakes such as Derwentwater, Bassenthwaite and a number of resevoirs being 'under threat'.

Lord Campbell-Savours said: "My Lords, with blue algae sightings in the Lake District from farmland nutrient runoff and overflowing septic tanks, and with Derwentwater, Bassenthwaite, Ullswater, Loweswater and a number of reservoirs under threat - and Windermere actually dying - why cannot responsibility for water quality and pollution be removed from an overstretched Environment Agency and transferred to a new water pollution control authority with lay membership, similar to the regional flood and coastal committee structures that currently cover flooding issues?

"It is food for thought."

Lord Benyon, the Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the House of Lords, accepted the former MP's suggestion, saying they are looking at how they protect water quality.

In response, he said: "It is indeed. We are constantly looking at the whole landscape of how we deliver government through our agencies.

"Maybe there is room for changing certain parts of what we do in the wider Defra family.

"Windermere is a really interesting case: the Environment Agency monitors occurrences of algal blooms.

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"We think that the largest reason for that is private sewage treatment, such as septic tanks and missed connections.

"There is of course an ongoing issue on a great many waterways where we have to look at it in the round.

"People like to find one villain when in fact there are many people at fault, sometimes ourselves.

"There will be people in this Chamber who have a badly connected or defunct system of sewage treatment which will be polluting a waterway. I might be one of them."

READ MORE: Here's where in Cumbria blue-green algae has been confirmed