In the week that NICE denied bowel cancer sufferers in England a drug that is freely available across much of Europe, and Sorafenib campaigner Tony Almond succumbed to liver cancer, Michael Portillo made a plea for democratic accountability over decisions affecting the availability of drugs.

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence, which is called NICE, decided this week that it is not going to fund a very expensive cancer drug which prolongs life at the end of a patient's life. This is the sort of decision that ought to be taken by ministers. Ministers ought to be proud to take this sort of decision and they ought to go out later and defend it. They might say, "We decided not to spend £10M on this drug that saved 2 or 3 people, we decided to put that money instead into another treatment that saved thousands of people; we're proud of this decision and we're going to stand for election on this issue". But no, all these decisions are now farmed out to quangos and councils and bureaucrats and officials, because ministers don't want to take responsibility for anything and the people who do take the decisions are beyond accountability.

Michael Portillo, BBC This Week, 19 Nov 2009

Who do you think should take the decision as to whether or not a life-saving or life-enhancing treatment is cost-effective enough to be provided free-of-charge on the NHS?