LABOUR must scrap Trident and use its funding to reinstate the winter fuel payment, scrap the two-child benefit cap and build a “fairer, greener future,” the Scottish Greens urged today.

The party criticised Chancellor Rachel Reeves for launching “a new wave of austerity” by cutting the energy support for all but the poorest pensioners and upholding the cruel two-child benefit cap.

Speaking on the United Nations International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, Scottish Green co-leader Patrick Harvie called for the Westminster government to use the money it is pouring into nuclear weapons to reverse these brutal austerity measures.

Mr Harvie said: “Nuclear weapons are an obscene moral evil that should have no place in 21st century society.

“Yet there are still vast numbers of warheads scattered across the planet and hundreds of them are based here in Scotland on the Clyde.

“The Labour government claim that they cannot afford to give pensioners the winter fuel allowance or scrap the two-child benefit cap, yet they are yet again marching lockstep with the Tories in committing to giving the nuclear weapons programme a bottomless pit of money.

“The eye-watering sums that are being poured into nuclear weapons would be far better spent lifting children and families out of poverty and tackling the climate crisis, which is the greatest security threat we face.”

Mr Harvie said that even if Trident had no cost implications, “keeping it would still be totally immoral.”

He said: “There can never be any justification for weapons which are only capable of indiscriminate mass killing, or the brutal legacy such as those left by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 80 years ago.

“If we want to take a stand for global peace, we must lead by example.”