RULES governing Gloucestershire's hospital transport scheme have been heavily criticised in a parliamentary debate.

Cotswold MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown has been so concerned by a series of cases he has come across of elderly people being denied transport to hospital that he raised the matter in the House of Commons.

He told health minister Gisela Stuart: "These cases graphically illustrate the way in which our elderly patients are being treated by the NHS. According to the Department of Health "if a patient has a medical need for transport, then transport should be provided free of charge as part of NHS treatment.""

Among the catalogue of cases he listed was that of an 89-year-old woman from Chipping Campden who had to pay a £45 return taxi fare to get to a hospital appointment in Cheltenham. Other cases include: -

l A woman with angina, aged 83, who went to hospital for an eye operation, but was denied transport because she was not in a wheelchair.

l One arthritis-crippled woman, who could not afford to pay her own way to hospital. Her daughter had to take her and wait from 8am to 5pm to take her home.

Mr Clifton-Brown blames an overly-rigid interpretation of criteria used to decide who should receive hospital transport. He said: "Government policy leaves health authorities with less discretion to spend money on hospital patient transport. This is a particularly acute problem in my rural constituency, because there is often no public transport available from villages to local hospitals."

Gisela Stuart said she would pass his comments to the county's NHS trusts, but Mr Clifton-Brown told the Journal he would continue to press for better health funding for the county. "That's something I will have to return to after the election."

East Gloucestershire NHS Trust spokeswoman Yvonne Wray said the new criteria for hospital transport had been in place for nearly two years and that most people were able to make alternative arrangements.

She explained: "The health community as a whole across Gloucestershire had to make various savings and the decision was made to find them from areas that wouldn't directly have an impact on patient care, such as closing wards and ending services. We try to be as flexible as we can, but we do have criteria which say that it is only people with a medical need for transport who can get it."