A surgeon is taking Bradford health bosses to an employment tribunal to fight his dismissal for allegedly misrepresenting his qualifications.

Robert Phipps, of Baildon, was employed as a breast surgeon for the Bradford Hospitals NHS Trust until his sacking last September.

The Telegraph & Argus reported last year how Trust chief executive David Jackson and his team said they had found discrepancies between Mr Phipps' application form and his actual career history.

Mr Phipps has appealed to hospital management against his dismissal. A Bradford Hospitals NHS Trust spokesman said that part of the internal appeal, which is separate from the employment tribunal, had been heard earlier in the year and that proceedings were due to reconvene at a later date.

Mr Phipps was yesterday ordered to pay a £9,000 penalty by a medical tribunal in New Zealand relating to his work as a surgeon there.

He had been found guilty in his absence by the tribunal in Otago, of conduct unbecoming a medical professional by exhibiting indifference to the suffering and medical risks he posed by not giving his patients' interest priority. He was given a fine of NZ$1,000 and ordered to pay NZ$30,483 costs.

The case related to an incident in 1994, while Mr Phipps was a surgeon at the country's Dunedin Hospital, when a junior surgeon called for help during an operation to find a woman's appendix.

The hearing was told that Mr Phipps, the on-call consultant surgeon, did not attend when asked but instead ordered the operating doctor, a basic trainee in general surgery, to sew up the incision and insert a drain. The tribunal was also told that Mr Phipps had denied the junior surgeon the authority to make a further incision into the patient's abdomen even though this was "very likely" to have found the appendix.

The female patient was left with complications following the procedure, including scarring, loss of tissue and muscle damage.

In 1994, Mr Phipps was sacked by Healthcare Otago after a review. But following five years' litigation, he was paid NZ$175,000 (£50,287).

Speaking from his home in Bradford, Mr Phipps said: "I have not been made aware of the decision. I was not represented at the hearing and was not able to go."

A directions hearing for Mr Phipps' case against Bradford Hospitals NHS Trust is due to be heard by an employment tribunal in Leeds on March 26.