Bank of England policymaker Martin Weale said his contributions to Monetary Policy Committee meetings have become "more stilted" since the BoE decided to publish transcripts, although he added the benefits outweighed the costs.

Since March the BoE has made transcripts of the final day of MPC meetings, when policymakers explain to each other how they reached their voting decisions. Transcripts will be released with an eight-year lag, as part of reforms announced last year to make the central bank's decisions more transparent.

"My own contributions have become more stilted as a result," Mr Weale said in a speech published by the BoE on Monday after he spoke at an academic conference in Geneva on Sunday.

"But I hope I am adjusting to the new procedure. The broader benefits of releasing the transcripts in terms of sustaining public confidence in the process far outweigh any theoretical cost," he added.

Former US Federal Reserve official Kevin Warsh, who wrote a review on which the BoE based its reforms, had warned there was a risk publishing transcripts could stifle free discussion, but that this was "limited and manageable".

Few central banks already publish transcripts from policy meetings. The Fed decided in 1993 to release lightly-edited transcripts with a five-year delay, while the Bank of Japan has a 10-year delay.

Some academic research suggests this could have hurt the debate since then. Former MPC members Adam Posen and Andrew Sentance also expressed reservations that transcripts could stifle free debate at BoE meetings.

Mr Weale, regarded as the most prominent hawk on the MPC, hinted last week he might again vote to raise interest rates because of a "fizzing" labour market and rising wages.

He has described his votes to hold rates since the start of the year as "finely balanced".

To better capture these nuances in policy decisions, in his latest speech Mr Weale proposed a reform to the MPC's voting system. Each member would cast 100 votes rather than one, enabling them to reflect, for example, a 55 per cent certainty that interest rates should rise.

"If ... everyone voted to represent what they actually thought, my hunch is that it would yield, on occasion, different and better decisions," Mr Weale said.