David Southall, the consultant paediatrician who accused a father of murdering his two infant children on the basis of a television documentary, has survived an attempt to strike him off the medical register.

The doctor made the allegations against Stephen Clark after watching a Channel 4 Dispatches programme about his wife Sally.

She was jailed for life in 1999 for murdering their baby sons Christopher and Harry, but the conviction was quashed on appeal in 2003.

In August the professional conduct committee of the General Medical Council (GMC) barred Professor Southall, 57, from any child protection work for three years.

The Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (CHRE) then appealed to the High Court, arguing the penalty against him was "manifestly inadequate" and that the GMC had "woefully failed" in its duty to protect the public.

However, Mr Justice Collins, sitting in London, decided that "erasure was not required", but did find that the conditions imposed showed "undue leniency", and more appropriate conditions were required.

He has ordered the conditions to be tightened and the GMC will hold a further hearing when Professor Southall's three-year restriction expires in September 2007.

At a recent two-day hearing, the CHRE asked the judge to find that erasing Professor Southall’s name from the medical register was "the only appropriate penalty" for such serious professional misconduct.

The medic pursued his theory about Mr Clark with social services and the police although he had no access to case papers, medical records, laboratory investigations, post-mortem examination records or X-rays.

Lawyers for the GMC and the professor of paediatrics at North Staffordshire Hospital, University of Keele, said striking off the eminent and highly respected doctor would be "disproportionate and draconian". It could even anger and demoralise fellow professionals in the very difficult child protection field, they argued.

Giving today’s ruling, Mr Justice Collins said: "I have decided that it is not necessary that Professor Southall should have been erased, but the conditions which were in fact imposed were not sufficiently tight to deal with the situation.

"He has, despite the existence of evidence which shows that Mr Clark could not have been responsible for his sons’ deaths, and his continuing lack of full knowledge of the relevant material which would have to be taken into account in reaching such a positive conclusion, not resiled from that conclusion. What strikes me as rather remarkable in this case is that a scientist, of all people, should form dogmatic views such as these based on a lack of proper evidence."

The case arose after Mrs Clark was jailed for life in November 1999 at Chester Crown Court for allegedly smothering 11-week-old Christopher in December 1996 and shaking eight-week-old Harry to death in January 1998 at the couple's home. The Court of Appeal later freed her after ruling her conviction was "unsafe".

Monica Carss-Frisk, QC, appearing for the CHRE, said Professor Southall saw the Channel 4 documentary on April 27, 2000.

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