HUNDREDS of patients in Burnley and Pendle are missing out on vital operations because of cheats who evade prescription charges for medicine.

Prescription fraud costs East Lancashire Health Authority £1 million a year - enough to pay for 65 kidney transplants or 145 heart bypass operations.

The figure, revealed in a report by the NHS executive, has brought a tough response from the government and Burnley MP Peter Pike.

Mr Pike says: "We need to root out the fraudsters and get that money working for patients in Burnley.

"Prescriptions are a vital part of NHS care and the people who are exploiting the system are not only cheating taxpayers, they are depriving patients of care.

"If our health authority was able to spend an extra £1 million on patient care, it could carry out an extra 145 heart bypass operations, an extra 689 cataract operations, an extra 222 hip replacements or an extra 65 kidney transplants.

"The government has announced a new war to combat prescription fraud and I'm backing their efforts."

It could become a criminal offence to evade paying your prescription charge, and other proposals include ant-theft and anti-counterfeiting measures, a reward scheme for pharmacies which detect stolen or forged prescription forms, and a scheme to transfer prescription details electronically.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.