Part 3 - General
Section 48 – Purpose and effect of this Act
179.Subsection (1) sets out that the purpose of the Act is to make provision in connection with the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EU.
180.Subsections (2) to (4) were included to cater for the possibility that the Bill might be enacted before the time that EU law ceased to have effect in Scots law by virtue of EUWA and therefore at a time when section 29(2)(d) of the Scotland Act 1998 would rendered it outside legislative competence to enact provisions that would be incompatible with EU law. However, as at the end of the implementation period on 31 December 2020, EU law has ceased to have effect in Scots law. Therefore subsections (2) to (4) are effectively spent.
181.Subsection (2) would have prevented the Act, or any provision made under it, from having effect in law, so far as it would be incompatible with EU law, before any relevant EU law ceased to have effect in Scotland. Should it have been necessary, it would have postponed the effect of any provision contained in or made under the Act that would have been incompatible with EU law before the provisions of EU law giving rise to the potential incompatibility ceased to have effect as a consequence of UK withdrawal.
182.Subsection (3) took account of the possibility that different provisions of EU law might have ceased to apply on different days and that the anticipated date of the end of the implementation period could have changed.
183.Subsection (4) defines EU law for the purposes of this section.
Section 49 – Regulations: supplementary
184.Subsection (1) provides that any power conferred by the Act (apart from commencement powers in section 51) includes the authority to make different provision for different purposes. It also allows the making of incidental, supplementary, consequential, transitional, transitory or saving provision.
Section 50 – Ancillary provision
185.This section enables the Scottish Ministers, by regulations, to make incidental, supplementary, consequential, transitional, transitory or saving provision in connection with this legislation. Should such regulations be used to textually amend primary legislation they will be subject to affirmative procedure. Otherwise they will be subject to negative procedure.
Section 51 – Commencement
186.This section provides that, other than Part 3 of the Act which comes into force the day after Royal Assent, the Scottish Ministers will specify the day on which the provisions in this Act come into force through regulations.
Section 52 – Repeal of Part 1 of this Act
187.This section allows for the Scottish Ministers to repeal Part 1 of the Act by regulations.
Section 53 – Short title
188.This section provides that the short title of the Act is the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Continuity) (Scotland) Act 2021.
