THERESA May has managed to quell a backbench rebellion and force her key Brexit Bill through Parliament. MPs who had hoped to force the government’s hand to give the Commons a meaningful vote on Brexit were defeated by 319 to 303.

The Prime Minister was so worried about losing yesterday’s vote that she ignored an old Parliamentary convention that sick MPs could be driven into the car park and “nodded through” the lobbies.

Labour MP Naz Shah was forced out of hospital, put in a wheelchair, given a sick bucket, and wheeled through the Commons. East Dunbartonshire Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson, who is due to give birth imminently, also had to traipse through the lobby.

The row was over the ability of MPs to stop the UK leaving the EU either without a deal, or with a bad deal. The government had rejected giving Parliament a meaningful vote, saying it would bind the Prime Minister’s hands during Brexit negotiations.

But, fearful of what exactly the repercussions of losing yesterday’s vote in the Commons might be, the government appeared to concede some ground. Brexit secretary David Davis said he recognised the authority of MPs to hold the government to account, and he insisted Parliament would “rightly and unquestionably have its say and express its view”.

That was enough for rebel leader Dominic Grieve to cave.

The former Attorney General said this was an “obvious acknowledgement of the sovereignty of this place over the executive in black and white language”.

He told the Commons: “My judgment – it is purely personal – is that if that is the issue, having finally obtained, with a little more difficulty than I would have wished, the obvious acknowledgement of the sovereignty of this place over the Executive in black and white language, I am prepared to accept the government’s difficulty, support them and, in the circumstances, to accept the form of amendment that they want.”

Grieve was accused by one angry Labour backbencher of behaving like the Grand old Duke of York. “You can’t keep marching the troops up the hill and down again and keep your integrity,” George Howarth said.

Six Tory rebels – Ken Clarke, Sarah Wollaston, Anna Soubry, Heidi Allen, Antoinette Sandbach and Philip Lee, who only last week resigned as a junior minister – held out.

During the Commons debate, the SNP’s Peter Grant said the Brexiteers in government wanted to stop MPs having a vote on Brexit for very obvious reasons.

“The hard-liners are seeking to create a situation where if, as seems increasingly likely by the day, a severely weakened Prime Minister – possibly in the last days of her prime ministership – comes back from Brussels with a miserable deal that nobody could welcome, the only option is to crash out of the European Union with no agreement on anything,” Grant said.

He added: “The reason why some in this House are determined not to give Parliament a meaningful vote is that they are worried an overwhelming majority of Parliamentarians on both sides of the House might vote against the cliff-edge scenario they have already plotted for us.”

There was some confusion when, minutes after the vote, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said nothing had really changed.

“There is no change to the fundamental issue here which is the government cannot be forced by parliament to negotiate something which it does not want to do,” he told the BBC.

He said the government had “to be able to hold out in our negotiations the prospect of no deal” otherwise the EU would get the upper hand.