COMMONS Speaker John Bercow announced he has selected none of the amendments to the business of the House motion, which is governing the indicative votes process.

Brexit-backing MPs had tabled several amendments but the Commons will be expected to vote on Tory former minister Sir Oliver Letwin's unamended proposal at no later than 3pm.

The debate on the indicative vote options is then expected to follow until 7pm.

Moving his motion, Sir Oliver acknowledged there would "no doubt be a quite complicated and highly contentious set of discussions" about the motions tabled.

Sir Oliver said he would continue to support the Prime Minister's Brexit deal.

He added: "I am absolutely clear that this is not an insurgency at all, it is an adjustment of the standing orders for today and if this is agreed for Monday it does not affect tomorrow, nor does it affect Friday, should the Government choose to make Friday a sitting day.

"And either tomorrow or Friday and I personally would entirely welcome this, the Government may of course bring forward meaningful vote three, for which I shall vote. I hope (MPs) will vote for it and give him a further piece of good news of which he will be easily capable of verifying, which is that should meaningful vote three pass on Thursday or Friday, there would be no further need for the whole of this process.

"This process has come about as a result of the increasing concern that many of us have had across the House of Commons that we were heading not towards an approval of the Prime Minster's deal but alas towards a no-deal exit which is something I pitted myself against for many months."

Commenting on the Government's stance on the business motion, Sir Oliver said: "I can't honestly say that I'm astonished that the Government is voting against it. I have to say, although I regret it, I somewhat suspected it might be the case.

"It's a pity that actually the Government didn't do what would have remedied what the Government described as a constitutional oddity by endorsing Amendment A and indeed at the right moment, by putting themselves on Amendment A as signatories, and they would of course immediately under parliamentary convention.

"They would have arrived at the top of the order and superseded any mere backbenchers and it would have become a Government amendment and all the ordinary order of the proceedings of the House would have been restored. That would have been the natural way to go, alas the Government decided not to do that and I understand they had reasons for it."

Former Chancellor Ken Clarke said: "It is actually a very novel proposition that the House would have to pass a law to affect the Government's policy in this way.

"Can (Letwin) think of any example in his experience, because mine is longer than his and I can't in mine, of a Government perusing a policy on such a vital national matter knowing it did not have the support of the House of Commons in the way it was going about it and simply defying a majority that had voted for another approach?"

Sir Oliver said: "If you can't think of such a case, I certainly am not going to be able to. I don't know of such a case."

Sir Oliver added: "There is a pretty strong precedent that if the House of Commons passes in a matter of extreme significance to the nation a resolution in favour of a clear view of how to proceed it would be not unlawful as far as I know, though that is a matter for the Attorney General to rule on and not me.

"But it would be not unlawful, but never the less very constitutionally unusual for the Government not to proceed in the way the House of Commons had requested it to do so.

"I profoundly hope that if we reached Monday and we get to a majority view in favour of a particular proposition that the Government would say, as I think it ought to say, that it would then carry that forward."

Sir Oliver said setting a precedent would never have been necessary if Whitehall had not failed.

He told the Commons "one very, very senior official described the situation as one in which it was necessary for Whitehall to save Parliament from itself" and although it was "very difficult for the official mind to absorb" the fact that "ultimately that is not how the constitution works".

He added: "This is a very important point we're making here about how our country is ultimately governed.

"In an emergency the House of Commons is capable of controlling its own business in such a way as to find a solution the vast majesties of Whitehall and Government have not been able to provide us with.

"It's because Whitehall has failed, not due to the inadequacy of any individual but due to the basic difficulty of the situation, that the Commons is taking these steps."