Mental health nurse and former Hartlepool Sixth Form College worker Eric Beach was found by the Nursing and Midwifery Council to have lied about a degree qualification to enrol on a post graduate diploma course.

The council said his conduct left his fitness to practise as "impaired" and the reputation of nurses could be affected by his lies.

The conduct and competence committee hearing was told Beach, 53, claimed to have got a 2:2 in biomedical science from Sunderland University, but he had only got a third class degree.The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) heard he made the claim in an application for a post-graduate degree at Northumbria University as a third class degree was outside the qualifying criteria.

On the same application form he said he had worked full-time at Hartlepool Sixth Form College for 10 months between September 2002 and July 2003.

But the committee heard he had only worked at the college for four months on a part-time basis.

Committee chairman Mary Elliott said: "We have decided the conduct of the complainant means his fitness to practise is impaired."We are particularly concerned about his trustworthiness – something which is vital between nurses and all other health care professionals and between nurses and patients.

"The reputation of nurses in the eyes of the public could be impaired by the complainant's actions. It reduces the profession in the standing of the public."

Joanna Dirmirkis, for the NMC, had earlier told the hearing: "This was a false representation.Beach's conduct was dishonest. The test for dishonesty is straightforward: did the registrant know their act would be regarded as dishonest by the average right minded person, but they carried out their act regardless despite this?

"The NMC's case is that you can be satisfied of this."

Beach, of Rowley Drive, Durham, was given a three-year caution for lying. Committee chair Mary Elliott said truth and truthfulness were at the heart of the nursing profession.

Beach refused to attend the hearing. But in correspondence read out in court he said he would never work as a nurse again."As far as I'm concerned the matter is closed," he stated