Typically, governments seek to amend opposition day motions to support their own policy.
[needs update] The outcomes of votes on opposition day motions are not considered legally binding, although they do represent the will of Parliament.
On 29 April 2009, Gordon Brown's government was defeated in an opposition day vote on the subject of settlement rights for veterans of the Gurkhas.
This led the SNP MP Pete Wishart to accuse the Government of "degrading [them] to little more than adjournment debates".
However, following a campaign by footballer Marcus Rashford, the government whipped its MPs to vote against a Labour motion calling on the government to continue funding free school meals for children over the school holidays until Easter 2021, which the Opposition claimed would prevent over 1 million children going hungry[3] during the COVID-19 pandemic, after which there was a strong public backlash, with many new-intake Conservative MPs receiving online abuse and threats.