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Editors at the Daily Mail have stated that a story alleging that NICE staff misspent public money on corporate credit cards was wrong. The paper alleged, in a front page article on 11 January that thousands of pounds had been spent in champagne bars. In fact the spending was on meeting rooms and sandwiches at the Royal College of GPs and the Commonwealth Club where two of NICE's independent committees held meetings.

The journalist had examined details of credit card expenditure published on the NICE website. She concluded that payments to Searcy's were inappropriate. The Daily Mail correction, printed on page 2 of the paper (24 January, 2014), makes clear this was wrong: “An article about spending by officials of NICE, the NHS drugs' watchdog on January 11 said that £3,346 was spent at a chain of champagne bars. We have been asked to make clear that this sum was for room hire and catering for committee meetings on two occasions at the Royal College of General Practitioners and at the Commonwealth Club.”

Sir Andrew Dillon wrote to the paper when the article appeared saying: “We use the public money entrusted to us carefully, not just because of our responsibility to advise the NHS on the effective and cost effective use of treatments, but because it's rightly what we are expected to do. All the expenditure you refer to was committed appropriately. You have a right, you might say a duty to examine how public bodies spend their money. But if you're going to do it, you should do so with due care and attention. You haven't done so in this case and as a consequence you've both misled the public and damaged our reputation.”

To find out more about the facts behind this story, visit our ‘Behind the headlines' feature.