A FORMER surgeon who wrongly removed part of a Blackburn social worker's neck has been allowed to work as a doctor, providing he does not carry out any surgery.

Julian Mason was banned from surgery by the General Medical Council in 2003 but had taken up a new career and is on his way to becoming a psychiatrist, the watchdog was told yesterday.

The former Royal Bolton Hospital consultant, 41, left a 23-year-old woman with a large red scar on her neck after a 1999 operation, the council had previously been told.

The woman, who a 2003 hearing was told worked for the youth offending team at Blackburn with Darwen Council, had gone to the hospital to have a lump removed in her neck for suspected cancer.

She said she wanted to have the procedure because her father and mother had contracted the disease.

But Mason wrongly removed two glands and a lymph node lower down her neck, the hearing was told.

Mason was banned from practice after the council heard of a series of blunders which left two other patients from the North West dead.

He has since begun training for a career in old age psychiatry at the Fairmile Hospital in Oxfordshire.

Yesterday's hearing was a three-year review of the original decision to ban him from being a surgeon.

Consultant psychiatrist at the hospital Dr Daphne Rice said: "He has a very good career as a consultant psychiatrist ahead of him.

"I feel Mr Mason is entirely suitable to continue with his training and become a consultant.

"He has learned a lot from the experiences he has gone through over the last six years."