Vacancies for membership of the Bank of England's interest-setting monetary policy committee are to be advertised as a result of last-minute change of heart by Gordon Brown.

Yesterday, appearing before the Treasury Select Committee for the 31st and final time in ten years, he told MPs that in future the timetable for appointing the committee's four external members - as opposed to the five drawn from the Bank - will be clearly laid out and advertised widely.

The advertisements will set out details of the particular skills and expertise is it looking for in relationship to each post.

"We have got to get the balance right between market skills and academic skills," Mr Brown added.

However, Mr Brown managed to sidestep a question by Michael Fallon, a Conservative MP, who asked why it had taken him ten year to admit that the appointments process had been too secretive.

"Neither the (US) Federal Reserve, nor the European Central Bank, or other major central banks have a system for publishing a timetable, nor do they invite expressions of interest, and that is what we are proposing to do today," retorted Mr Brown.

He is set to cease to be Chancellor when he becomes Prime Minister on June 27.

The existing system of announcing appointments to the Bank's committee baldly and after the event has recently attracted increasing criticism, led by the Conservative shadow chancellor George Osborne.

The Bank's governor Mervyn King, who chairs the committee has himself suggested that the system might be reformed. After Mr Brown's statement yesterday, a Bank spokesman said the governor welcomed the changes.

The main catalyst for criticism came last year, after the resignation of Richard Lambert in March, to become director-general of the CBI, and the sudden death of David Walton in June.

For two meetings, the Bank's committee was down to seven members for the first time since it was set up in 1997.

Under the legislation that establishing it the committee is required to have a quorum of at least six members.

Despite that, Mr Brown took longer than expected to appoint new members.

Tim Besley did not join the committee until September, 2006, followed a month later by Andrew Sentance.

Questions were also raised by Mr Brown's appointment of David Blanchflower, who lives and works in the US. He has to commute across the Atlantic every month for the committee's meetings, running up considerable travel and hotel expenses.