A chewing gum tax should be introduced to help pay to clean up British streets, the Local Government Association has said.

A cross party motion has been tabled in Parliament along with a petition asking Government to crack down on the "nuisance and unsightly blight imposed throughout the UK by the careless disposal of chewing gum".

Local councils currently spend £60 million a year scraping an estimated two million pieces of gum, dropped daily, from pavements.

The campaign is being backed by the LGA and campaigners Clean Up Britain, which has also called for the chewing gum industry to be legally forced to contribute towards paying for the problem. Chewing gum is the second most commonly dropped litter after cigarette butts.

The petition says: "The Government must hold billionaire gum producers accountable for the huge costs their product inflicts. Currently they pay nothing towards these costs.

"A gum tax needs to be imposed on the sector to help offset the unsustainable and obscene costs that local Councils are currently having to bear - and which diverts scarce funding away from social care, housing and other essential local services."