UK Supreme Court rules that Scottish Parliament Continuity Bill cannot become law Law Society response to the Supreme Court's ruling

The UK Supreme Court has published its judgment today, 13 December, stating that parts of the Scottish Parliament’s ‘Continuity Bill’ are outside of its competence and as a result it cannot become law.

Today’s judgment means that the Scottish Government will now have to decide whether to bring forward amendments to the Bill which will remove the sections identified by the Supreme Court judges as incompetent before bringing it back to the Scottish Parliament to enact.

Alison Atack, President of the Law Society of Scotland, said: “Today’s judgment means that the Scottish Government has a decision to make on whether to bring forward a revised bill.

“With under four months to go until we are due to leave the EU, time is extremely limited. The Scottish Government will have to act quickly if it intends to bring forward a new bill which takes account of the points raised in the Supreme Court judgment and which will allow enough time for it to go through parliamentary processes and for proper scrutiny.

“We are keen to play our role in scrutinising legislation and the large body of subordinate legislation to help in the completion of this process by 29 March next year. At that point we need to be certain that EU law has been incorporated into our domestic law.”

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