Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs
- PMQs – Snap verdict
- PMQs – Verdict from the Twitter commentariat
- Lunchtime summary
- Afternoon summary
The Commons has voted 318 to 305 to reject #EUWithdrawalBill New Clause 1 relating to the retention of certain EU-derived rights and protections. pic.twitter.com/H8VTZXMjKQ
The Commons has rejected #EUWithdrawalBill New Clause 6 by 322 votes to 298.
The clause would have required Ministers to place a summary of legal advice received relating to Article 50 in the public domain. pic.twitter.com/NRgcnmA6p3
Before the voting started, Steve Baker, the Brexit minister, wound up for the government.
If you were watching Theresa May give evidence to the Commons liaison committee at the end of last year, you will remember an almost comic exchange between May and Yvette Cooper, the Labour chair of the home affairs committee. Cooper repeatedly tried to get May to confirm that MPs would vote on the EU withdrawal agreement and implementation bill before the withdrawal agreement gets ratified by the government. (May has promised MPs a vote on the bill, but obviously that will be a bit meaningless if by then the treaty has already been ratified.) But May just refused point blank to answer Cooper’s question. (Given her stubbornness and message discipline, in another world May would have made an ideal junior minister in the Gordon Brown Treasury.)
Both Houses will have meaningful votes on whether to accept the agreement. And it is my expectation that we would not ratify before that primary legislation [the withdrawal agreement and implementation bill] has gone through.