A Hampshire MP has warned that people could be "swimming around" cigarettes butts in the Solent as she pushed for a new ban on plastic filters.

Dame Caroline Dinenage has suggested that her proposed ban on plastic cigarette filters could prevent swimmers from bathing around "grim" butts.

She put forward the ban as an as amendment to the Government’s Tobacco and Vapes Bill, in an effort to improve the cleanliness of waterways and save council taxpayers’ money.

Her proposal, which has received backing from Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green Party MPs, would ban shops from selling plastic cigarette filters – both as standalone products and as part of ready-made cigarettes.

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The Gosport MP said: “Banning plastic filters will do absolutely nothing for public health.

“It will make a great deal of difference, though, to the thousands of my constituents who bathe or swim in The Solent or for the marine life that live there, too.”

Dame Caroline said this was “litter that we are all paying to clean up” when councils collect dropped waste.

She added: “This is pretty grim but bearing in mind that cigarette stubs can take around 14 years to degrade in the marine environment, swimming around Stokes Bay at the end of my road among little pieces of discoloured plastic is obviously unpleasant.

“But the bigger threat is to the environment.”

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Dame Caroline warned that studies have shown cigarette butts when they break down are “toxic or very toxic to marine life”.

She added that marine ecosystems, such as the Solent, are “precious”, supporting both tourism and nature-based solutions to flooding.

The MP noted that smokers can already buy biodegradable filters and “other large companies have already demonstrated it’s easy to make a switch in production that would be required to accommodate this change in the law”.

She added that “unlike” paper straws, “these biodegradable filters work and make no discernible difference to the user experience”.

According to the charity Keep Britain Tidy, around 66 per cent of all littered items are cigarette butts.