The First Minister has said she will stand "full square beside" firms who refused to comply with any UK Government request to disclose details of foreign workers.

Speaking at First Minister's Questions on Thursday, Nicola Sturgeon added that she considered the Conservative proposals "offensive" and "disgraceful".

She was responding to a question about measures announced in home secretary Amber Rudd's speech to Conservative party conference.

Sturgeon also attacked Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, asking if she was "ashamed" of the UK party's "xenophobic rhetoric" on immigration.

Davidson hit back that she had made her position on the issue "perfectly clear" at the Tory conference, where she said in her speech immigrants who have come to live in the work are "welcome here", and urged her colleagues to be "internationalist" and "outward-looking".

Rudd's controversial speech on Tuesday revealed home office plans to force firms to disclose how many of their workers are non-British.

The home secretary said measures to curb immigration were necessary to "change the tide" of public opinion and added she wanted to "flush out" firms abusing the rules and "nudge them into better behaviour".

She later told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the proposal on foreign workers was "not something we are definitely going to do" but it was "one of the tools" under consideration.

Addressing MSPs, the First Minister said she "would absolutely stand full square beside any company that refused to comply with any request to publish details of foreign workers".

She went on: "What I found particularly offensive was the idea that companies would be named and shamed for the foreign workers they employ as if there was something shameful about employing workers from other countries. It is absolutely disgraceful."

Sturgeon added that the home secretary had "tried to row back from this proposal by saying that it wasn't something the Tories were definitely going to do".

She said: "Well, I think it's about time the Tories stood up and said this: that it's definitely something they will not ever do because it would be downright disgraceful and disgusting, and this government would have absolutely nothing to do with it."

The SNP leader condemned the "xenophobic rhetoric" she said had come from the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham this week, demanding to know if opposition leader Davidson was "ashamed" of it.

Davidson responded: "My position is to say that people from the EU and elsewhere are welcome here and that this is their home, and my position is to retain the closest possible trading relationship with our European friends and neighbours while expanding trade abroad.

"My position is also to face up to the realities ahead of us, to mitigate risks and to take advantage of opportunities."

The Scottish Tory leader asked Sturgeon what work her administration was doing in these areas, in light of a new report by the Fraser of Allander Institute claiming between 30,000 and 80,000 Scottish jobs could be at risk in the event of a so-called "hard Brexit"

Davidson asked the First Minister if the government would "put the lion's share of its efforts into examining practical solutions or simply complaining about the result".

"Hard Brexit" refers to a deal where the UK would gain greater control over immigration but lose its access to the European single market.

The Fraser of Allander report, by researchers at Strathclyde University, modelled a number of different scenarios in the event of a "hard Brexit", all of which predicted a drop in Scottish GDP and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs over a ten-year period.

The First Minister said that Theresa May's government seemed to be pursuing the "hardest of hard Brexits", adding: "This government will do everything in its power to protect Scotland's interests and to mitigate the serious risk that Scotland now faces, risks that are set out quite clearly in the Fraser of Allander report today.

"We are working intensively with all sectors across our economy, that work is being led by our economy secretary and by Mike Russell, who I have appointed to deal specifically with the Brexit negotiations."

New hubs aimed at encouraging overseas businesses to invest in Scotland are being opened up in London, Dublin and Brussels, Sturgeon added.

She accused the Scottish Conservatives of historically opposing attempts by the Scottish Government to represent itself abroad, adding that she wanted to make sure "we're not reliant on the likes of Boris Johnson to represent us overseas".