A family doctor who had a four-year affair with an emotionally vulnerable woman patient has been banned from practising medicine.

Keith Fraser, a 53-year-old father-of-six, was struck off the medical register “with immediate effect” by a General Medical Council panel yesterday.

Mr Fraser, who has been working as a £350 per week lorry driver in Bradford since he was suspended from the Highfield Medical Centre in Tong, showed no emotion as the panel made its judgement at the hearing in Manchester.

Panel chairman Paddy Conway told him his affair with the woman, who cannot be named and was referred throughout the hearing as Miss A, was “likely to bring the standing of the profession into disrepute”.

Mr Conway said: “The panel has determined that your conduct is fundamentally incompatible with your continuing to be a registered medical practitioner and it is therefore proportionate and necessary in the public interests to direct that your name be erased from the medical register.”

Mr Fraser had been a doctor for 31 years before he was suspended from practising in April 2007 when the woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, made a complaint against him.

She had been seeking the doctor’s help since 2003 and he had treated her for anxiety and depression and referred her for psychiatric counselling.

Despite knowing she was “emotionally vulnerable” the GP, who was then married, started a consensual sexual relationship with her. He showered her with gifts and money, lavishing £10,000 and £9,000 on her on two separate occasions. He also paid £8,000 towards a new car. He booked a hotel for them to stay in on a trip to York, had sexual encounters with her during appointments, bought her a mobile phone and sent her lewd text messages, the six-day GMC hearing was told.

This added up to a “significant abuse of trust with a vulnerable patient” said Elizabeth Nichols for the GMC.

Mr Fraser had admitted most of the allegations against him and had conceded at an earlier hearing that fitness to practice had been “impaired” by the affair.

When details of the affair came to light in March last year, Mr Fraser fled his family home in Menston. His wife of 27 years made an emotional appeal on television for his safe return.

Now divorced, he lives in a rented bedsit in Bradford and has been shunned by his six children and now wants to move away from the area.

Earlier his barrister George Hugh-Jones told the panel his client had paid “a high price” for his actions and asked the panel to take into account what had happened since the relationship was revealed.

Mr Hugh-Jones said Mr Fraser had previously been a good clinician, he was well liked by colleagues and patients.

However the panel decided that could not counterbalance “the gravity” of his behaviour.

In his judgement, Mr Conway said: “Your relationship with patient A has attracted substantial press attention and has caused you considerable personal and professional loss and embarrassment. The panel notes your clinical skills have not been called into question.

“However, it is in no doubt that you have breached the trust which patients should be able to place in doctors.”

Neither Mr Fraser nor Mr Hugh-Jones wanted to comment following yesterday’s hearing.

After the case Dr Peter Dickson, medical director at Bradford and Airedale Teaching PCT, said: “Trust between a patient and their doctor is at the heart of the medical profession, but unfortunately Dr Fraser’s behaviour breached the standards rightfully expected by patients, the public and his profession.

“Cases such as this are extremely rare. The vast majority of doctors work to the highest professional standards and are committed to delivering a high level of patient care. It is deeply regrettable when a doctor abuses his position of trust.”