THERESA May will visit Scotland today for her last meeting with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon before Article 50 is triggered on Wednesday.

The meeting comes the day before a Holyrood vote on a second independence referendum, which was delayed because of the attack on Westminster last Thursday.

Speaking ahead of the visit, the First Minister’s spokesman said the whole government wanted to know what May was going to do to protect Scotland’s interests.

“There has been no discussion over how Scotland’s interests will be represented, what role the Scottish Government will play in negotiations, nor which powers the Tories intend to take for Westminster and which powers will rightly be determined by Holyrood,” he said.

“Most worryingly there has been no discussion over how the UK Government intends to manage the financial impacts of Brexit and the consequences for jobs and the economy in Scotland. There are clearly a lot of areas where we hope the Prime Minister intends to provide answers.”

The two leaders are also expected to discuss security and the threat against the country in the wake of last week’s attack in London.

But with their position on the immediate future of Scotland and Europe seemingly irreconcilable, it will be the constitution that dominates the discussion between the the two.

The Prime Minister is expected to say she is determined to create what she will call a "more united nation".

She will say: ‘‘A more united nation means working actively to bring people and communities together by promoting policies which support integration and social cohesion.

“In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that means fully respecting, and indeed strengthening, the devolution settlements. But never allowing our Union to become looser and weaker, or our people to drift apart. So in those policy areas where the UK Government holds responsibility, I am determined that we will put the interests of the Union – both the parts and the whole – at the heart of our decision-making.’’ The First Minister’s spokesman said: “Given the lack of engagement and the failure of the UK Government to seek an agreed approach or to support staying in the single market, which are at the heart of our compromise proposals, it is appearing that this is another area where a Tory Prime Minister intends to simply dictate the rules and expect people in Scotland to go along with it.

“We believe it should be for the people of Scotland to decide their own future, which is why we will return to parliament on Tuesday to seek a mandate to begin discussions on a referendum that will put Scotland’s future in the people’s hands.”

The Prime Minister’s visit comes as the UK Government is reportedly considering using little-known “Henry VIII clauses” to nod through new Brexit legislation without any parliamentary scrutiny.

Details have started to emerge of the Great Repeal Bill, the legislation that will kick-start the mammoth task of replacing all EU laws that apply to the UK with British laws.

It effectively scraps the European Communities Act 1972, and converts thousands of EU regulations into domestic law. Effectively, all laws that take effect in the UK as a result of EU membership will be converted into UK law.

Ministers are reportedly seeking to use so-called Henry VIII clauses, which would allow the government to use delegated powers to make changes to secondary legislation, and therefore escape the full scrutiny of parliament.

The government argues it needs the power as a significant proportion of existing EU law will not work properly without changes being made, so ministers must be given the ability to make “technical” changes quickly.

A UK Government source said: “Next week will mark a defining moment in this country’s history, when the Prime Minister invokes Article 50 and opens the way for formal negotiations to leave the European Union and build a truly global Britain.

“But a strong, sovereign country needs control of its own laws. That, more than anything else, was what drove the referendum result: a desire for the country to be in control of its own destiny.

“So next week we will get on with the job, and set out the steps we will take to ensure control of our laws lies in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast.”

Jeremy Corbyn told ITV’s Peston On Sunday programme that Labour would oppose such powers.

He said: “Yes, because I don’t think the record of Henry VIII on promoting democracy, inclusion and participation was a very good one.

"He was all about essentially dictatorial powers to bypass what was then a very limited parliamentary power.”

Corbyn said there needed to be “total accountability” at every stage of the Brexit negotiation.

Liz Murray from Global Justice Now Scotland warned of a massive democratic deficit.

“The Great Repeal Bill will attempt to transfer thousands of laws from EU into British law, but many of those laws should rightly fall under devolved authority,” she said.

“It’s bad enough that delegated powers, including Henry VIII powers, could be used to give ministers in Westminster powers to repeal laws outside the authority of the British parliament. But when those laws actually belong in Holyrood you end up with a massive democratic deficit which our MPs, MSPs and the Scottish Government need to do all they can to redress.”