European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

I shall not go back to waxing too much about the nature of the debates we have been having. We can be clear that it is the fault not of the Ministers but of the brief they have been given to keep things going until the timetable motion comes in, at which point if all is intact, they have made it—that is their job done. Those of us who have been Ministers have probably been in that situation ourselves on various occasions. Just as in the debate about the meaningful vote when the Minister at no stage engaged in the question what sort of meaningful vote the House of Commons should have, on this occasion the Minister has not engaged in any feature of the Florence speech with which he had any reservations. The substance was not challenged by a word that he said, hence my speculating why we might see the extraordinary spectacle of the Government instructing all their Ministers to vote against a prime ministerial declaration of Government policy from which, as far as I can see, the Prime Minister has at no stage personally withdrawn.