Campaigners are today renewing calls to get hospital car park charges scrapped for cancer patients.

Patients at Leicester's hospitals foot bills of more than £300 each to park while undergoing potentially life-saving treatment, according to Macmillan Cancer Support.

The charity wants English hospitals, including the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, to let cancer patients park free.

The renewed call comes as Scotland marks the first anniversary of abolishing all hospital parking charges. Charges have also been scrapped in Northern Ireland and Wales.

Macmillan said 15 years ago cancer sufferers stayed in hospital as in-patients while they were treated, so did not need to travel for care.

Modern treatments see patients undergo chemotherapy and radiotherapy during the day and then go home, meaning they have to pay for car parking.

The charity says hospitals save £6,000 a week giving patients a six-week course of radiotherapy, and part of this should be used to help with parking.

Ciaran Devane, Macmillan chief executive, said: "It is morally wrong cancer patients are being forced to fork out parking charges so they can get their life-saving treatment.

"It's time this tax on illness ended for patients."

Earlier this year, Health Secretary Andy Burnham pledged to bring in free parking for hospital in-patients and visitors in England, but Macmillan said that did not go far enough.

Mr Devane said: "The Governments of each other British nation have seen sense and brought in free hospital parking. Now, we are calling on the Westminster Government to do the same in England."

Leicestershire patients receive cancer treatments at Leicester Royal Infirmary, Leicester General and Glenfield hospitals.

They are offered parking at a reduced rate, and at the Infirmary can buy a £25 saver card ticket which gives them £50 worth of parking.

Jane Welsh, 53, from Knighton, Leicester, was diagnosed with breast cancer last year.

She said: "The charges can be a real burden. It became a real issue for me when I went on to half pay from work. It would be so easy to have a system where patients having regular treatment could have free parking."

Rob Pinsent, director of facilities at Leicester's hospitals, said: "We have given much thought to what parking concessions we can provide, not only for our cancer patients, but for all our patients requiring regular appointments.

"We introduced the charges in 2007 to ensure safer and easier access to our hospitals and have continued to keep our charges to an absolute minimum.

"We have developed a variety of discounts and also have disabled spaces and drop-off zones.

"While Macmillan's national campaign calling for the Government to provide free hospital parking for cancer patients seems admirable, without additional funding the loss of income would mean funds were taken away from direct patient care."

www.macmillan.org.uk