Nearly a year ago, at the end of January, during the Health and Social Care Bill second reading in the House of Commons a number of Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs, following their briefing from Government whips, all made the same point about what they hoped from the Bill.  Each of them said that part of their local hospital had been threatened with closure – or actually been closed = and they knew that under this Bill such closures would not have happened.

That was why they were supporting the Bill.