The Scottish secretary has admitted there would be serious consequences if the UK government failed to win Holyrood’s backing for its final Brexit deal.

David Mundell said he expected Holyrood would be allowed to vote on whether it consented to the so-called great reform bill with which the UK will formally quit the EU, repatriating substantial powers to Westminster and the UK’s three devolved governments.

The vote on a legislative consent motion (LCM) does not give the Scottish parliament a binding veto allowing MSPs to block the bill at Westminster – a fact accepted by Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and her cabinet.

But if Westminster were to press ahead after Holyrood had voted it down, that would set up a fierce political battle between the UK government and the pro-independence Scottish National party and Scottish Greens, both of whom want a second independence vote.

With 63 SNP MSPs leaving her two short of an overall Holyrood majority, Sturgeon needs just the Scottish Greens’ six MSPs to vote down the LCM, pushing the UK and Scotland into a confrontation that could further fuel support for Scottish independence and a snap referendum.

Nicola Sturgeon. Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA

With conflicts looming between the two governments over Holyrood’s power to vote on the much shorter bill released on Thursday to trigger article 50, Mundell admitted he was worried about the bigger task of agreeing exactly what new powers Scotland would get.

“I think there are really big issues that will be in the great repeal bill, around powers for this parliament, and whether we have a hole in our law because the body of European law hasn’t been adopted,” he told reporters in Edinburgh.



“Not agreeing to the great repeal bill would have very significant consequences. But my focus will be to work with the parliament here, with committees, to get that agreement.”

That bill could repatriate sweeping new powers to Holyrood, including control over farm subsidies, fisheries and employment rules, as well as enshrining EU legislation into Scots law. Mundell said criminal justice powers, including over consumer rights, were “the most obvious ones”.

These would be likely to increase Holyrood’s spending and its autonomy from the rest of the UK, increasing the chances of a turf war with other UK cabinet ministers and the Treasury over how much EU power and financing Scotland should inherit.

Tensions between the two governments escalated further after the meeting with Mundell. Sturgeon’s chief spokesman said their ministers had learned “zero, zilch and nothing” about the new powers the UK government would offer Scotland. “It was a fairly pointless meeting,” he said.

Mike Russell, the Scottish Brexit minister, said he was deeply disappointed that nothing substantive had emerged given that Mundell had requested the meeting to discuss the great repeal bill.



“There was no offer, no guarantee even that current devolved powers, presently exercised through EU membership, will be coming back to Scotland. There should be no UK government power grab,” Russell said.

UK government sources said Russell was overstating the purpose of the meeting. One official said the UK government was at the start of “a long and complex conversation about the repatriation of powers. Today’s meeting was not about horse-trading powers or making promises. It was to begin a conversation about the best way to proceed in all this”.

Sturgeon was preparing for a more immediate showdown with the UK government over the new European Union (notification of withdrawal) bill published on Thursday by the UK Brexit secretary, David Davis. She is to table a legislative consent motion to Holyrood asking for it to reject the bill despite uncertainty over whether Holyrood has the power to do so.

The UK supreme court’s 11 judges ruled unanimously on Tuesday that the UK’s devolved parliaments had no legal power to hold LCM votes on EU and international treaty legislation such as an article 50 bill, because those powers were clearly and explicitly reserved for Westminster.

They said that LCMs were a political convention, known as the Sewell convention after the Labour peer who devised it in 1998, and not a legally binding constitutional right.

But the court appeared to contradict that by then stating that the courts had no power to decide what the scope or remit of that convention was because it was a political agreement. The judges added that the article 50 process clearly changed and affected the powers of the devolved parliament.

Sturgeon’s officials said that meant an LCM was permissable under Holyrood’s standing orders – a view rejected by Mundell. “I don’t hold the view that the bill we published this morning should be the subject of that process because it is simply a notification that we wish to enter into negotiations to leave the EU, and that is a reserved matter,” he said.

Holyrood officials said Ken Macintosh, its presiding officer, had not yet decided whether that LCM on article 50 could go ahead and would only decide after he had seen the UK government’s article 50 bill and the wording of Sturgeon’s motion.