LABOUR leader Jeremy Corbyn vowed to scrap Universal Credit in a bid to lift people out of poverty during a visit to Inverclyde.

At a rally held in the Beacon the veteran campaigner promised to help the 11,500 local claimants of the controversial benefit.

He also pledged to fight fuel poverty affecting one in three Inverclyde households - and hit out at the decision to scrap the free TV licence fee for the over 75s.

With a general election looming the long-serving MP, joined by Holyrood Labour leader Richard Leonard, fired up his local members and called on them to help him bring about change.

Mr Corbyn, speaking to a packed hall, said: "Inverclyde, and communities across Scotland, has been blighted by the grotesque inequality and poverty caused by nine years of vicious austerity and Tory cuts.

“Poverty and inequality are not inevitable.

"In the fifth richest country in the world no one should be living in fuel poverty, no one should be working for poverty wages and nobody should be forced to fill in a four page form to prove that their child was born as a result of rape or suffer under the Tories’ pernicious sanctions regime.

“Our NHS has been left on its knees, in need of billions of pounds more funding after years of reckless SNP cuts.

“It is a Labour government in Westminster that will deliver the investment that Scotland so desperately needs.

"We will transform Scotland’s economy, rebuild our communities and public services and end the evil of in-work poverty.

“We have a once-in-a-generation chance to deliver the real change that our country needs."

The opposition leader told his audience he would immediately introduce emergency measures to end the benefit cap, the two child limit, the sanctions regime and the five week wait for an initial payment.

Labour's Inverclyde general election candidate Martin McCluskey said party members were enthused following the leader's visit to Greenock, the second in just over a year.

Mr McCluskey said: "Inverclyde can't afford another five years of the Tories and their policies which have punished the poorest, hit hard-working families and removed benefits from our pensioners."