Overview and Background 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.