News

Former Folkestone GP Clifford Ayling is seeking a judicial review into a government report on his conduct.

The disgraced doctor was jailed for four years in 2000 for 13 counts of indecent assault on 10 women patients between 1991 and 1998.

Ayling has claimed a Department of Health (DoH) report into his conduct was full of errors and had blackened his name.

The DoH commissioned a review into how the NHS handled allegations about the conduct of Ayling following his conviction. The report published in 2004 said a catalogue of complaints made against him - including some from nursing staff - were not properly investigated.

But Ayling told BBC South East Today: "There are so many gross errors in the report and I feel that the public have got a right to know how it is that the Department of Health have managed to publish such a report.

"I have maintained from the very outset that I am innocent, despite the courts."

It was reported by the BBC website that Sarah Harman, solicitor for Ayling's victims, said: "He was convicted in a criminal court of sexually abusing many of his former patients and that conviction stands.

"His reputation has been blackened by that conviction not really by any reports or any complaints of the women subsequently."

A spokesperson for the Department of Health confirmed they had been served legal papers.