Theresa May opens main Brexit debate after three Commons defeats – as it happened

We’re going to close down this live blog now. Here’s a summary of the most important events on a damaging day for the government:

• Theresa May suffered defeats in the Commons over her approach to Brexit. First, the government was found in contempt of parliament, in a historic move, over the refusal to publish the full Brexit legal advice. Ministers said it would be produced tomorrow. Then the government lost a vote over an amendment that would give MPs the chance to vote on a plan B if May’s Brexit deal is rejected.
  
• The prime minister sought to defend her deal, saying the Brexit divisions had been “corrosive”. She cast the deal as one that met the UK’s requirements, while compromising in some areas – and, perhaps more importantly, the only deal on offer.
  
• The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said his party would not back the deal, saying it provided no certainty. He said, more generally, that ministers should be ashamed of the state they had left the country in. And, turning to the deal itself, he said it was “not the deal the country was promised and parliament cannot and, I believe will not accept it”.

You can read our full story here:

Closing, Blackford calls for a separate arrangement for Scotland, saying one has been handed to Northern Ireland once Brexit comes about next year.

He says Scotland has been “ignored, sidelined and undermined” during the Brexit negotiations and calls for Scottish independence from the UK.

When asked by Daniel Kawczynski, the UK’s first Polish-born MP, whether his pro-immigration stance would “give wind to Ukip’s sails”, Blackford said:

I simply say we need to take these arguments on – migration has enriched us. The thought we would take up the drawbridge and stop people coming to participate in the growth of our country is quite fundamentally repugnant to me.

The SNP’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, says he is proud to be a citizen of the EU and introduces a friend of his from Amsterdam, who is in the Commons gallery. He says that friendship came about as a result of the rights afforded him as a citizen of the bloc.

Those rights are to be given away and the UK to become and inward-looking country as a result of Brexit, he says.

Johnson ends, saying he fears parliament is “trying to cheat” the British people and predicting that politicians will be clearly seen as doing so if they back Theresa May’s deal.

Johnson is getting on to his solution. He says the government should go back to Brussels and say the UK should say it wants a deal if it can get one. But we will not accept the backstop, he says.

The former foreign secretary says the new partnership talks would be a better forum for talks about the arrangements in the island of Ireland and they should be left until then. He says half of the money agreed upon should be withheld initially.

Johnson is accused by Sir Roger Gale of being someone who “prefers the grievance to the solution”. May has come up with a solution, he is told, “what is his big idea?”

He is he will get to that soon. More on that when it comes in.

Back in the chamber, Johnson – who has been saying the EU would have the power to simply refuse to release the UK from the backstop – is asked if he takes no responsibility, as a senior leave campaigner and former foreign secretary.

The fact is I’m afraid I was not able to continue to support this process.

He is reminded he initially supported May’s Chequers agreement, before deciding later to resign over it.

Johnson had been saying:

They will keep us in permanent captivity as a memento mori, as a reminder to the world of what happens to all those who try to leave the EU.

This is a recipe for blackmail and it’s open to any member of the EU to name its price for Britain’s right to leave the backstop.

The Spanish will make a play for Gibraltar, the French will go for our fish and our bankers, the Germans may well want some concessions on the free movement of EU nationals and so it goes on.

The Conservative MP, Dominic Grieve, has been speaking about his amendment outside the Commons chamber, which passed earlier this afternoon.

The former foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, is on his feet. He says there is no support for May’s deal. The former culture secretary, Ed Vaizey, rises to disagree. Johnson relents, but says both remainers and leavers – even the whole Johnson family – is united in the belief that this is a bad deal.