DISABILITY campaigners have expressed outrage after a Bury student was barred from university - because of his wheelchair.

Bury North MP David Chaytor yesterday raised the youngster's plight in Parliament. He told the House it was "completely unacceptable and illegal."

And he demanded assurances from education ministers that no other student would ever go through such an ordeal again.

But he was turned down by the institution, Mr Chaytor told the Commons, expressly because it was unable to meet his access requirements.

The Bury North MP said: "This is a young man who has been in a wheelchair but whose academic performance was outstanding and who was rejected for an economics degree at one of Britain's leading universities explicitly on the grounds that the university could not cope with his access problems." He declined to indentify the student - or the university.

The student had got a place at another university, but the MP asked junior education minister Malcolm Wicks to take up the matter with the vice-chancellor of the university.

Mr Wicks replied that he would indeed write, and said: "We want to see every able young man and woman in a British university regardless of any circumstance and certainly regardless of disability."

He said the matter would be investigated by the Government's Disability Task Force.

The case caused outrage with local disability campaigners.

Mr Alan Norton, manager of BADDAC (Bury and District Disabled Advisory Council), which supports and helps disabled people, said: "An attitude like that is going back to the Dark Ages.

"I am very shocked and surprised to hear that a university would penalise someone on the basis of a physical disability. It is an injustice."

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