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UK government fails in bid to call election for 15 October – as it happened

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MPs agree amendment to Benn bill to put cross-party version of May's deal back on table

MPs started voting on Stephen Kinnock’s amendment 6. But then, a few minutes into voting, Lindsay Hoyle, announced that the division had been called off because the amendment had been passed - because MPs opposed to it did not put up tellers.

Here is the explanation of what the Kinnock amendment does.

This amendment would set out as the purpose of seeking an extension under article 50(3) TEU the passage of a withdrawal agreement bill based on the outcome of the inter-party talks which concluded in May 2019 – see NC1 for contents of the Bill and Amendment XX for text of the request letter to the European Council.

This means that, if the PM needs to request an article 50 extension (because he has not negotiated a new deal, and MPs have not voted to approve a no-deal Brexit), then getting an extension to pass a version of the Theresa May deal becomes government policy.

Effectively, that means that any Brexit delay would not be a blind delay; it would be a delay to enable a version of the Theresa May going through.

It is not clear whether this has passed by accident - or as a result of some cunning plot.

What comes next in the Commons tonight?

MPs are now voting on amendments to the Benn bill, which is designed to stop a no-deal Brexit on 31 October. We don’t know yet how many amendments will be put to a vote. Each vote takes about 15 minutes. But it may well be that all amendments get voted down.

After that there will be a vote on the third reading of the bill. The result of this is set to be identical, or almost identical, to the vote at second reading - which was the important vote on principle. The opposition and Tory rebels won the comfortably. (See 5.22pm.)

After the third reading the bill will be ready to go to the Lords.

And then MPs will have a 90-minute debate on Boris Johnson’s motion saying there should be an early election. It may be a lively debate - Johnson is opening for the government - but the opposition will not back the motion, and so Johnson will not get the two-thirds majority he needs under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act for an early election to actually go ahead.

MPs are now voting on the first amendment - amendment 19.

The full list of amendments is here (pdf).

And the full text of the bill is here (pdf).

Amendment 19 has been tabled by the Tory Richard Graham. It is an amendment that is designed to ensure that parliament would get the chance to debate whether it wanted the existing deal after the EU council in October.

Explaining it, Graham told MPs:

There are many of us in this house on all sides who do not want no-deal and yet ... many colleagues have not supported a deal and therefore my simple amendment to the bill today proposes that the amendment requires the government to have a vote on Monday 21st October, the first sitting day after the EU council on a deal - whether it be a new deal or the previous deal and that should that vote be successful and be approved by members of this house, then the government would be required, if they needed more time, to ask for an extension from the EU purely in order to get the legislation through parliament.

It gives us all one last chance to vote for a deal if we do not want no-deal.

Barclay says the EU says it is ready for a no-deal Brexit. But he says there is a difference between having the right regulations in place (where he implies EU preparations are satisfactory) and operational readiness, which he says varies from state to state.

Caroline Flint, a Labour MP backing the Kinnock amendments, tells Barclay in an intervention that many of her colleagues now regret not voting for a Brexit deal. She says she would like both front benches to get this message. Now is the time to move on, she says.

Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary, is now winding up for the government. He says the government opposes the bill. He says it is “so flawed” that the government has not even proposed amendments to it.

Referring to the Kinnock amendments, Barclay complains that Kinnock voted against the Brexit deal all three times.

Stephen Barclay
Stephen Barclay Photograph: HoC

In the debate Paul Blomfield, the shadow Brexit minister, is winding up for Labour now. He says he has some sympathy for the Kinnock amendment, but he argues that it is flawed because, he says, the cross-party talks did not actually reach an agreement on a revised withdrawal agreement text.

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The debate on the 29 amendments tabled to the Benn bill has not been especially illuminating. The most interesting ones are those tabled by Labour’s Stephen Kinnock and other, mostly Labour, MPs designed to allow MPs to vote for a version of Theresa May’s deal, incorporating the changes proposed during the cross-party talks.

Proposing his amendments, Kinnock said:

It is a travesty that parliament did not get to vote on the withdrawal agreement bill as it was very different to the former prime minister’s blind Brexit and provided far more clarity on EU and UK relations.

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