A British-based drugmaker has made a groundbreaking offer to the National Health Service to cover the cost of a £25,000 cancer drug if a patient using it failed to show adequate progress.

The NHS would only pay for the new drug, Velcade, when patients responded well to it, under a joint proposal from Janssen-Cilag the drugmaker, and the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, the body that recommends which treatments the NHS should adopt.