A doctor whose imprisonment for molesting 10 of his patients sparked an official inquiry and a raft of recommendations has failed in a High Court challenge to the publication of the resulting Government paper.

Clifford Ayling objected to the publication of Safeguarding Patients, which sets out how recommendations in relation to sexual behaviour by doctors would be taken forward.

The paper was published partly in response to the results of an inquiry into the investigation into allegations of indecent assaults of 10 patients at his surgery in Folkestone, in the 1990s.

Ayling was jailed for four years after being found guilty at Maidstone Crown Court in December, 2000, of 13 counts of indecently assaulting patients.

The Department of Health subsequently launched an inquiry into his case, ultimately contributing to last year’s report, which set out how patients could be protected from rogue doctors.

Ayling challenged the decision to publish the paper, arguing that the Government failed to take account of 180 pages of submissions he made after release of the inquiry report and prior to the paper’s publication.

He said the report, known as the Ayling Report, contained factual errors and suggested that he was guilty of crimes as far back as the 1970s and 1980s, when he was only convicted of more recent offences.

The Government should have ordered an external review of the inquiry and report before anything was published, he told Mr Justice Lloyd Jones at the High Court.

But, refusing him permission for a full judicial review of the decision, the judge said the decision not to hold an external review was a matter of discretion for the Health Secretary.

“The fact is that the evidence has been taken into account for the purpose of the command paper, which, it appears, is considerably more limited than is understood by Mr Ayling to be the case,” he added.

“The command paper makes no findings of fact in relation to his conduct and I accept there is no further requirement on the Secretary of State to deal with his submissions on the conduct.”