The Scottish Government's External Affairs Secretary Fiona Hyslop said the white paper had "fallen short on employment rights and environmental protections" and offered "little reassurance" on the economy.

The UK government's latest blueprint for Brexit released today threatens to derail plans for closer trade ties with India as it would prevent Britain from making the kind of concessions on trade in goods that New Delhi seeks, according to details of a confidential report.

The former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith voiced "deep misgivings" over the proposals, telling the Commons: "I voted to leave, not to half leave".

And it did not get a ringing endorsement from U.S. President Donald Trump, who said in Brussels before the white paper's publication he was not sure Mrs May's approach was what Britain voted for in the 2016 referendum.

Asked about his comments at a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation summit in Brussels, Prime Minister Theresa May defended herself, saying "what we are doing is delivering on the vote of the British people. that's what our proposal does", she told reporters.

"That's why it will be a hard negotiation", he said.

This is in spite of missives from the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier, in which he has repeatedly said the European Union "cannot, and will not" share its decision-making powers with a third country.

The government also insists, as expected, that it sees the EU's usual adequacy agreement - which the bloc has with 12 countries, in addition to two partial agreements - as "the right starting point" but that it should "go beyond the framework".

The White Paper is based on the painfully brokered compromise struck by Theresa May's government last Friday, over which Foreign Minister Boris Johnson and Brexit Minister David Davis resigned earlier this week.

But the document, which spells out in detail where Britain hopes to maintain ties, might add fuel to a simmering rebellion in her Conservative Party.

Meanwhile, some Conservative Party Eurosceptics have hit back at Mrs May by tabling amendments to a key Brexit Bill that could kill off her Chequers plan.

Once the paper is published, it will be looked over by the EU.

It also plans to allow certain types of freedom of movement but confirms that it will not allow the type of free access to Britain that is enjoyed by European Union member states now.

The City of London Corporation described the paper as "a real blow for the UK's financial and related professional services sector".

The White Paper proposes a free trade area for goods - but it is very close to single market membership for goods in all but name.

Those rules, however, in the government's eyes, are "not sufficient to deal with a third country whose financial markets are as deeply interconnected with the EU's as those of the United Kingdom are".

Banks and insurers in the City of London have been playing it safe by moving staff and opening hubs in the European Union to make sure they still have access irrespective of the shape of Britain's new trading relationship with the bloc post Brexit.

And while Britain will no longer fall under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice - a longtime bugbear of Brexit supporters - British courts would "pay due regard" to European court case law in relevant cases under the proposals.

"At every stage through these negotiations people have cast doubt as to whether we are going to achieve what we want to achieve, and at every stage we have done so".