A consultant paediatrician was today barred from any child protection work for three years after being found guilty of serious professional misconduct for accusing a father of murdering his two baby sons on the basis of a television documentary.

The General Medical Council (GMC) decided to limit the medical work Professor David Southall, an expert on Munchhausen's syndrome by proxy with more than 30 years' experience, can do following a two-day disciplinary hearing in Manchester. But the GMC stopped short of actually striking him off as some reports had suggested it would.

The GMC tribunal chairman, Denis McDevitt, told Prof Southall that he must not engage in any aspect of child protection work either in or outside the NHS for three years.

Prof Southal, 56, accused Stephen Clark, 42, of deliberately suffocating his infant sons after watching a Channel 4 Dispatches programme in April 2000 in which he talked about his wife Sally's 1999 conviction for the murders of the two boys. Mrs Clark's murder convictions were quashed on appeal last year.

Mr McDevitt, chairman of the GMC professional conduct committee, told Prof Southall: "Taking into account the facts found proved against you including inappropriate and irresponsible behaviour and an abuse of your professional position, the committee consider your conduct amounts to a serious departure from the standards expected from a registered medical practitioner."

Mr McDevitt the paediatrician failed to take reasonable steps to verify his allegations when he produced a report on the Clark family in August 2000. Prof Southall claimed it was "beyond reasonable doubt" that Mr Clark had suffocated his first son, Christopher, in a hotel room.

"Your failure to adhere to these principles resulted in substantial stress to Mr Clark and his family at a time when they were most vulnerable and could have resulted in a child being taken back into care unnecessarily, and Mr Clark prosecuted as a result of your false allegation.

"The committee are concerned that at no time during these proceedings have you seen fit to withdraw these allegations or to offer any apology. In the circumstances, the committee have concluded that in your own and the public interest it must take action regarding your registration."

Mr Clark said he hoped that the GMC's verdict would stop Prof Southall and other doctors from making "reckless allegations of child abuse against innocent parents".

He said: "I hope that the committee's finding of serious professional misconduct against Professor Southall, and the imposition of conditions preventing him from working in the child protection field for three years, will send a strong message to him - and to any other, like-minded doctors - that irresponsible and reckless allegations of child abuse against innocent parents are simply not acceptable and will no longer be tolerated.

"I am also, of course, relieved that at last my complaints have been upheld and I have been fully exonerated from any blame."

In June, the GMC decided Prof Southall acted in a way that was "inappropriate", "irresponsible" and "misleading" when he produced the report on the Clark family based on a theory about the case that he presented as fact underpinned by his own research.

But the council then decided that it was not an abuse of his professional position to contact child protection officers, voice his concerns to police or make the allegations at a time when he was suspended from his job at the North Staffordshire hospital NHS trust.

Prof Southall previously admitted to the GMC that at the time he produced his report he had not interviewed either Steve or Sally Clark. The paediatrician said he had declined another doctor's request to place a caveat in his report to child protection staff explaining that it was based upon limited information.

The doctor has always denied serious professional misconduct. He will face the GMC's professional conduct committee again in January on seven other sets of complaints.

Prof Southall has previously attracted controversy for using hidden cameras to film parents suspected of abusing their children.