New defeat for May as Speaker’s decision is attacked

From Page 1. package, tabled by former minister Sir Hugo Swire, also places a legally-binding commitment on the Government to end the backstop arrangement within 12 months, and to seek assurances from the EU that it will seek to do the same.

The development came after 17 Tory rebels helped pass Mr Grieve’s amendment by 308 votes to 297.

The vote came hard on the heels of Tuesday night’s Commons defeat for the Government on a motion intended to limit its powers to change taxes in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

A series of MPs rose to complain that the vote should not go ahead as the Government motion should not be amendable.

But Mr Bercow defended his decision amid jeers and heckles from the Tory benches.

He said: “I’m trying to do the right thing and make the right judgments.

“That is what I have tried to do and what I will go on doing.”

Mr Grieve said his amendment was an attempt to “accelerate the process” if the vote was lost so as to avoid the prospects of a no-deal Brexit.

“I realise there are a few of my colleagues who believe that if the Government’s deal is rejected we should simply do nothing and leave the EU on March 29 with no deal at all and with all, to my mind, the calamitous consequences that would follow on from it,” he told the BBC.

Justice minister Rory Stewart questioned the basis of Mr Bercow’s decision, saying: “It is a very, very unusual thing that he did. I think it probably would have been against the advice of most people on parliamentary procedure.”

Brexiteer former minister Crispin Blunt warned many no longer regarded him as a neutral arbiter of Commons proceedings and urged him to “reflect” on his position.

“For many of us we will now have an unshakeable conviction that the referee of our affairs... is no longer neutral,” he said.

Meanwhile, Yorkshire Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns described Mrs May’s deal as a “sell out” of those who voted Leave, adding it is “impossible” for the Commons and country to unite behind it.

Ms Jenkyns, who has represented Morley and Outwood since ousting Ed Balls in 2015, said “the division we have seen is as a result of the Prime Minister’s own making”.