Sir Ed Davey fell into the water three times while paddleboarding on Lake Windermere. The Liberal Democrats leader was on a visit to Lake District with local candidate and former party leader Tim Farron, as part of a general election campaign trail.
Earlier in May United Utilities was engulfed in a scandal over news of a massive sewage spill at Windermere February.
The water company said that the spill was caused by an unexpected fault on the third party telecoms cable network in the area, "which United Utilities was not notified about and which affected both the primary system and United Utilities' backup".
It said "engineers took urgent steps to resolve the situation and we informed the Environment Agency within an hour of the pollution being confirmed".