THE surgery where pervert doctor Davinder Bains molested female patients is refusing to say if he will claim an NHS pension – to protect his rights under data protection laws.

Bains was jailed for 12 years last May after using a James Bond-style spy camera hidden in his wristwatch to secretly film intimate examinations of hundreds of women.

The disgraced GP, 47, used his position of trust to abuse more than 200 patients aged between 14 and 51 at Tinkers Lane Surgery in Royal Wootton Bassett.

But the practice turned down a Freedom of Information Act request asking if he stood to benefit from a pension scheme.

The surgery said: “The information you are asking for is personal data and therefore is not accessible in terms of the FoI Act.

“I am therefore not able to give you the information you have requested.”

The request had argued that an exemption should be applied in the public interest given that Bains had abused his position and been convicted and struck off the medical register.

The practice also turned down a request for an internal review.

Julie Bailey, of Cure the NHS, said: “We are constantly being told about openness and transparency, but this information should be in the public arena. The NHS is ours and we want to see people being held to account so they do not walk away with pensions and financial settlements.”

Eleven NHS workers have been stripped of their pensions having committed crimes ranging from murder to molesting patients, the Department of Health revealed last month.

The action was taken after they were deemed by the Health Minister “to have been gravely injurious to the State or to be liable to lead to serious loss of confidence in the public service.”

The list included doctors, nurses and an NHS administrator – with one of the most notorious being Harold Shipman, who used his position as a GP to kill up to 250 patients.

Doctors’ pensions are among the highest in the public sector and are significantly more generous than schemes provided for the vast majority of the working population.

The Department of Health also refused to provide any details concerning possible payments to Bains – despite confirming that it did hold some of the information.

Bains completed his three-year training as a GP in February 2007 and worked at Tinkers Lane from June the following year. A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said: “If a member of staff is convicted of an offence in relation to NHS employment that causes loss of confidence in the NHS the pension can be removed under the NHS Payment Pension Scheme Regulations.”

Tinkers Lane declined to comment further.