Whether it will provide an update on the proposed continuity bill.

The Scottish Government today introduced the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Legal Continuity) (Scotland) Bill (“the Bill”). The Bill, like all Scottish Government Bills, was accompanied by a Ministerial statement, cleared with me, that it is within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament.
The legislative competence of any Bill is determined by applying the relevant legal tests. The principal question in relation to the competence of the Bill arises under section 29(2)(d) of the Scotland Act 1998 – namely, whether the Bill is incompatible with EU law. That question falls to be assessed in the relevant legal context, which includes the following circumstances:
(i) The UK Government has taken steps under Article 50 TEU to withdraw the UK from the EU.
(ii) Upon withdrawal of the UK from the EU, EU law will cease to apply, and the EU law constraint on the powers of the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Ministers will cease to have any content.
(iii) There is a practical necessity to make provision, of the sort contained in the Bill, to enable the law to operate effectively upon and after the UK’s withdrawal from the EU.
The Bill has been carefully framed so that it does not do anything or enable anything to be done, while the UK remains a member of the EU, which would be incompatible with EU law. Rather, it enables provision to be made to deal with the consequences of withdrawal from the EU – to ensure that the law, insofar as within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament, continues to operate effectively immediately upon the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. It is modeled, in that regard, on the UK Government’s EU (Withdrawal) Bill. In the context of a process of withdrawal from the EU in accordance with EU law, the enactment of such provisions to ensure legal certainty and legal continuity is not incompatible with EU law. In short, it is compatible with EU law to make provision, in the way that this Bill does, for what is to happen when EU law no longer applies, following a process which is provided for in EU law itself and which has already been initiated.