The BBC's health correspondent Adam Brimelow looks at the implications.

Should the childless be celebrating yet?

Well, the guidelines from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence are still being considered and they are at a pretty early stage, it has to be said.

Among the people who are going to get a look at these recommendations are the Department of Health and of course they are likely to be mindful of the financial implications of such a huge expansion of infertility services.

Having said that, it was the DoH which commissioned this report in the first place so they will have to take NICE's recommendations very seriously.

Will any decision be a long time coming?

Yes, the final recommendations aren't due out until early next year. There are two phases of consultations - with so many interested groups and such a politically and ethically sensitive issue, there has to be quite wide ranging consultation.

At the moment NICE is going through the first period of consultation, asking the interested groups: "How are we doing? Are our recommendations going along the right lines?"

They are going to get feedback from the groups and draw up secondary recommendations, which may or may not include these guidelines on IVF.

And then finally they will publish their report early next year.

Who would qualify for this treatment?

It appears that it is going to apply to women under the age of 40 and also it appears that six cycles of IVF treatment would be on offer.

But certainly it is going to be very difficult to draw an arbitrary cut-off line in somebody's life.

There are bound to be winners and losers in any such decision making process and those who lose out are going to be bitterly disappointed.

If vast amounts of money are diverted to IVF would services such as cancer care suffer?

Obviously, there is a finite amount of money that is being allocated to NHS spending but this whole issue of cost is very difficult to evaluate.

Certainly people involved in the fertility industry point out that the cost to the economy of infertility are enormous in terms of stress, depression, work days lost and basically if you invested more money in providing better more reliable fertility treatment on the NHS there would be a net saving.