Harold Shipman's name was erased from the medical register yesterday, 10 days after the Hyde GP was found guilty of murdering 15 of his patients. The General Medical Council, which has been criticised for failing to act against him sooner, said he had grossly abused the trust of patients and undermined public trust in doctors.

The speed with which the case was heard by the five-member professional conduct committee was only possible because Shipman's lawyers agreed to waive the usual six week delay between the preliminary hearing and the final public event.

"The committee are appalled by the evidence they have heard. It is abhorrent that Dr Shipman cold-bloodedly murdered 15 of his patients, using his medical skills to do so," said Rodney Yates, who chaired the panel.

"Those patients and their families had placed their trust in him. He grossly abused that trust and in doing so gravely undermined the trust which the public places in the medical profession, in particular their family doctors."

Mr Yates, one of the lay members whose number the GMC has promised to increase in an effort to reassure the public that it intends to protect patients and doctors, said Shipman was "a disgrace to the medical profession and totally unfit to practise medicine".

Shipman's registration was suspended with immediate effect and the erasure will be confirmed in 28 days, unless he appeals. He was placed on interim suspension on Thursday.

Sir Donald Irvine, president of the GMC, said: "Shipman has appalled us with his monstrous crimes. He betrayed his patients and undermined public trust in doctors. Today, I am pleased to say, he has been thrown out of the medical profession."

Presenting the case against Shipman to the committee, Sir James Badenoch QC said: "It is not possible to imagine a more terrible misuse of a doctor's skills and knowledge, nor a worse abuse of the trust placed in a doctor by innocent patients than this practitioner's prolonged and callous campaign of murder.

"It must be obvious that this case very vividly illustrates what is an obvious truth about our society - namely that it is very difficult for anyone to believe that a doctor is deliberately harming the very people whose health and safety his skills and calling are presumed to protect."

Shipman was accused of falsifying prescriptions to feed his own drugs habit in 1975. After evidence from psychiatrists, he was sent a warning letter by the GMC, but no further action was taken. His final employer, the West Pennine health authority, did not know about his conviction and had not asked the GMC whether Shipman had ever come to its notice.

To commit the 15 murders for which he is serving life imprisonment, Shipman again stockpiled drugs, writing illegal prescriptions for morphine. "This suggests a murderer who was studied and efficient in his campaign of death," Sir James said.

A further 160 deaths are now being investigated. "The especially tragic feature of most of his victims' deaths is that without his fatal administrations most or all of them would have gone on to live a good number of years of normal life," Sir James said. "The evidence suggests that he showed a detached indifference to their deaths and to the murderous acts he committed."

Following the Shipman case, the GMC is reviewing its disciplinary procedures and structure in an attempt to bring the regulatory body up to modern standards of efficiency, transparency and openness, in the knowledge that if fundamental changes do not happen fast, the government is likely to intervene.