The Scottish Government has quietly dropped its push for abortion law to be devolved to Scotland.

An SNP source said that the party was concentrating on priorities such as welfare and the minimum wage instead.

Abortion was a highly-divisive issue during the Smith Commission negotiations on further powers for Scotland, which formed the basis of the new Scotland Bill published by the UK Government.

The cross-party Smith talks almost collapsed at one point as Labour made the topic a 'red line' and suggested it would not sign up to a deal that would devolve the power.

The move was prompted by fears of the impact on pregnant women of potentially different legal limits on termination on either side of the border.

In the end a compromise was reached and Smith agreement said that "further serious consideration should be given to its devolution and a process should be established immediately to consider the matter further".

But it is understood that there have been no substantive discussions and no future talks are scheduled.

An SNP source said: "The SNP's priorities for more powers were set out in our manifesto and are clear - employment policy, including the minimum wage, welfare, business taxes, national insurance and equality policy. We did not include abortion in these priorities."

Within hours of the publication of the Scotland Bill, Scottish ministers accused the UK Government of attempting to veto its decisions around the new powers.

Deputy First Minister John Swinney said that the Bill fell "well short of fully implementing the Smith Commission's recommendations".

He said Scottish ministers would be unable to exercise powers on welfare, such as scrapping the bedroom tax, on fuel poverty, energy company obligations and electoral registration without first consulting UK ministers.

But he was also challenged to state whether or not the SNP would seek to amend the legislation to secure the Nationalists' aim of full fiscal autonomy (FFA) for Scotland after, when asked, he simply said there "could be" amendments to this effect.

Earlier this year Alistair Carmichael, the then Scottish Secretary, branded the veto claim "nonsense".

He insisted the SNP were purposefully "conflating consultation with veto".

At Westminster, David Mundell said the Conservative Government had "moved quickly on day one" of the new Parliament to publish the Bill, which would make Holyrood one of the most powerful devolved parliaments in the world.

The Scottish Secretary said: "We made a promise to turn the all-party Smith Commission agreement into law and we are now doing that at the earliest possible opportunity. The onus is now on the Scottish Government to start telling people in Scotland what they are actually going to do with these new powers."

Elsewhere, Labour said it would seek to amend the Bill to give Holyrood the "final say" on welfare.

Ian Murray, the shadow Scottish Secretary, said: "Labour amendments will give the Scottish Parliament the power to top up UK benefits and create new benefits of our own.

"Scotland will have the powers to defend the vulnerable against Tory austerity whilst retaining the UK-wide pooling and sharing of resources offered by the Barnett Formula. It's about simple fairness," he added.

The Edinburgh MP also seized on Mr Swinney's lukewarm response on FFA, saying: "The SNP ran a general election campaign on the basis of full fiscal autonomy and abolishing the Barnett Formula. Yesterday SNP MPs would not commit to bringing amendments forward to the Scotland Bill to deliver it and, today, John Swinney couldn't say whether they would keep their promise to amend the bill to deliver fiscal autonomy."

He added: "They should just be honest and admit that they agree with us that if Scotland loses the pooling and sharing of resources across the UK it would mean an additional £7.6bn gap in our funding, meaning tax increases or swingeing cuts on a scale David Cameron can only dream off."