The government's medicines advisory body will from this autumn open to public scrutiny the work of the committees that decide whether the health service should pay for new drugs.

In a ground-breaking move to boost transparency, Sir Michael Rawlins, the chairman of the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), told MPs that the action marked the latest in its efforts to boost transparency and that it had been a matter of "regret" that its committees had previously met in private.