Jailed GP 'took photos of patients'

Ayling was jailed for four years for molesting 10 female patients

Disgraced GP Clifford Ayling used to bring a camera to work to take pictures of women as they were about to be examined, an inquiry has heard.

Ayling, who worked as a GP and in hospitals in Kent, was jailed after being convicted of a string of indecent assaults against female patients.

The independent inquiry, set up by the government, is looking into how he was able to abuse his patients largely unchecked for 30 years.

On Friday a nurse who worked with Ayling in the 1980s said he would use his own camera to take photographs of his woman patients.

Concerns 'were ignored'

She was a colleague of Ayling, who worked as a GP in Folkestone and in hospitals in east Kent, at the gynaecological unit at the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford.

Ayling was jailed for four years in December 2000 at Maidstone Crown Court after being found guilty of 13 counts of molesting 10 of his female patients.

But at the trial it emerged earlier concerns about his work had been ignored.

In June 2001 he was struck off the medical register by the General Medical Council.

The independent committee of inquiry, set up last September by the Department of Health, started at the end of April and is due to consider evidence from 70 former patients and about 100 NHS staff.

It is expected to last eight weeks and its findings will be submitted to health secretary Alan Milburn in the summer.

Ayling is due to be released from jail in August.