By SUZANNE ELSWORTH

A FORMER St Rocco's Hospice medic was struck off by the General Medical Council yesterday after trying to con his way into senior posts with false details on job applications.

Dr Michael Matthew Ashley, aged 55, of Faringdon Road, Winwick, 'betrayed the trust of colleagues' by falsely claiming co-authorship of 11 medical publications. The committee further ruled that the doctor had made deceitful and misleading claims to previous posts he had never held. The false job claims were included in a CV submitted by Ashley in applications for a host of consultants posts across England and Scotland.

The committee also heard how Ashley was sentenced to 200 hours community service in 1999 after being convicted of false accounting and intimidating a witness. The judge had branded him 'a liar, cheat and perjurer.'

At the end of the three-day hearing, committee chairman Professor Kenneth Hobbs said Ashley's false claims of qualifications in his CV and his declaration that he was co-author of the 11 publications, were 'totally untrue.'

Prof Hobbs said: "These claims were totally untrue since you were a co-author of none of them.

"In addition, in some cases the titles and dates of the articles and the names of the journals were deliberately changed and you removed some of the true authors' names.

"Both the public and the profession have a right to expect that doctors will be honest and trustworthy, and that they can rely on information given about their professional experience.

"The facts proved against you in this case demonstrate a very serious and persistent course of dishonest conduct, falling seriously below the standards expected of doctors.

"In the light of these serious findings, the committee has concluded that you are guilty of serious professional misconduct."

The professor added that there was no evidence that patients had been directly harmed and that Ashley had been a competent doctor who had devoted himself to the field of palliative medicine.

But because of the seriousness of Ashley's behaviour the committee had no choice but to strike him off. He said it would have reached the same conclusion if either the doctor's conviction or other misconduct had stood alone.