page_title: Parliamentary votes on Brexit
section_title: Commons consideration of the Lords amendment
hierarchical_section_title: Parliamentary votes on Brexit / History / Commons consideration of the Lords amendment
caption_attribution_description: English: Official portrait of Keir Starmer, taken in June 2017
context_page_description: Parliamentary votes on Brexit, sometimes referred to as "meaningful votes", are the parliamentary votes under the terms of Section 13 of the United Kingdom's European Union Act 2018, which requires the government of the United Kingdom to bring forward an amendable parliamentary motion at the end of the Article 50 negotiations between the government and the European Union in order to ratify the Brexit withdrawal agreement.
  The wording of the clause was strongly contested by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, with the Lords proposing an amendment to the bill giving further powers to parliament. When the bill returned to the Commons the Conservative government offered concessions and the Lords' proposed amendment was defeated. The bill was then passed into law on 26 June 2018.
  At the end of March 2019, the government had not won any of the meaningful votes. This led to a series of non-binding "indicative votes" on potential options for Brexit, and the delay of the departure date.
context_section_description: The government rejected the proposal by the Lords that would give the Commons the power to decide the next steps for the government if the withdrawal agreement were to be rejected by parliament.
  Labour MP Keir Starmer urged Conservative MPs who want Britain to remain in the EU to vote with Labour in favour of the Lords amendment when the bill returned to the Commons, and former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown suggested that May could be replaced by a new Tory Prime Minister if she lost the vote. The prominent Tory remainer Amber Rudd urged her party's MPs to back the government in the vote.
  The process of parliamentary ping-pong then took place between 12 and 20 June 2018.
caption: Keir Starmer
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