By Paul Goodman
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11.30pm Update List of Conservative MPs who opposed Second Reading:
Tellers: Peter Bone and Craig Whittaker.
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The 91 figure comes from Sky News. It may not be quite right. But we can be sure that the revolt against the bill has beaten last autumn's 82 votes for a EU referendum.
So how big a proportion of Conservative backbenchers is 91?
Let's work on the assumption that there are roughly 207 Tory backbenchers. This is because there are 307 Conservative MPs in total. At least 80 serve as Commons Ministers or Whips. Add the Parliamentary Private Secretaries – there appears to be no complete record of them on the net – and one can't be far short of 100 members of the front bench.
So 91 is well over a third of all backbenchers and approaching half – 103 or so.
But wait. 91 is just the number that voted against the bill. There will be abstentions as well. So it's more likely than not that if one adds votes against to abstentions over half of all Tory backbenchers failed to support it.
And since some Ministers will have held their noses and voted for the bill it's fair to say that there's no consensus for it among the 307 Conservative MPs.
PPS Conor Burns resigned from the Government this afternoon and PPS Angie Bray has been sacked for voting against the bill.