RUTH Davidson has said she will not initiate a legal challenge against the Scottish Government’s EU Continuity Bill.

The Scottish Conservative leader said she hoped the Scottish and UK Governments would find a way to agree on an amendment to the EU Withdrawal Bill which would allow the legislation to progress at Westminster.

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“I don’t want this to go to court. I don’t think we should be where we are right now. I want to see agreement and I know the PM and the First Minister have both said that,” she told BBC Sunday Politics Scotland.

Davidson said on Friday she would support a legal challenge in the supreme court if the Scottish parliament voted for its own powers over Brexit. Reports suggested it was likely that the UK’s law officers would ask the supreme court to strike down an emergency bill which Holyrood voted on last Thursday to rush through to protect its powers after Brexit.

Asked about that report, Davidson told BBC Radio Scotland on Friday that she believed legal action would be needed to test the “very complex, finely balanced legal situation” in court.

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“I think that we have to,” she told Good Morning Scotland. “I think lawmakers like politicians have a duty to respect the law and I think that if this is in contravention of that then, absolutely, it is incumbent upon us to test that.”

The measures in the continuity bill are designed to sidestep Westminster by giving Holyrood direct control over the repatriation of up to 111 EU powers over areas such as agriculture, fisheries, environmental protection, cross-border crime and food safety, into Scottish law. The Welsh assembly will consider similar legislation this week, in a bid to intensify pressure on the UK government to make fresh concessions over the devolved parliaments’ powers after Brexit.

Legal sources expect Richard Keen QC, the advocate general for Scotland and the UK government’s Scottish law officer, to challenge the Holyrood bill if it is passed. Ken Macintosh, the presiding officer of the Scottish parliament, ruled Holyrood did not have the legal power to implement the Scottish government’s bill. But Scotland’s lord advocate, James Wolffe QC, told ministers in Edinburgh they do have those legal powers.