Nicola Sturgeon’s government would be backing Conservative cuts if it does not top up tax credits, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said.

The former Labour leader said that the SNP risked “going along” with the controversial Tory cuts.

Mr Brown, the architect of the tax credits system, also warned that George's Osborne's plans risked pushing child poverty to its highest level for 50 years.

Mr Osborne is expected to set out revised plans later this month in his Autumn Statement, following a humiliating defeat on the issue in the House of Lords.

But the SNP called on the Conservatives to axe the proposals.

Earlier this week a power Commons committee urged ministers to postpone any cuts for a year to allow a rethink.

In a speech on poverty, Mr Brown said that the new powers in the Scotland Bill would allow Holyrood to top up any benefit.

SNP ministers “will now have the choice to do that and use these powers - or to go along with the Conservative policy," he said.

"I have no doubt what should be done.”

He added, however: “We should not ever abandon the idea of universal set of rights for every citizen of the UK, irrespective of nationality.

"But I do think you do have to recognise that devolution means a different social model, depending on ... analysis of the circumstances (and) willingness to fund them.”

Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale has said that she will use new tax and welfare powers to ensure that families do not lose out.

Speaking at an anti-poverty event earlier this week, the First Minister appeared to hint that she intends to use the new powers to protect Scots on low salaries.

She warned that if all of the Conservative's planned tax credit changes were implemented around 200,000 families with children in Scotland would lose an average of £3,000 a year.

She added: "If tax credit cuts are implemented the Scottish Government will have the opportunity to use new welfare powers...to protect those on low incomes."

SNP MP Mhairi Black urged Tory ministers to abandon the planned cuts, which ministers say are necessary to deal with the UK's ballooning welfare bill and pay down the Budget deficit.

“Even other Tories are seeing how devastating these cuts will be," she said.

"Yet this Chancellor remains hell-bent on wielding his ideological axe."

Speaking in London, Mr Brown rejected Conservative claims that the cuts would be offset by the introduction of a new £9 National Living Wage.

“It was not an accident that the minimum wage and tax credits were introduced together...A minimum (living) wage without tax credits cannot take full account of the family circumstances and in particular the needs of children,” he said.

In comments that will be interpreted as a swipe at his own party, he also said that Labour had to be credible, adding: “You cannot deliver principles without having power."

Meanwhile, a Tory MP has said he will boycott a Treasury minister's visit to his constituency over the tax credits row.

Mr McPartland said his decision not to attend the meeting was in protest at figures from the House of Commons library which he said “proved” child tax credits would be cut for many, despite pre-election assurances to the contrary.

He said: “ This is completely unacceptable and destroys the government’s final defence that planned cuts do not apply to child tax credits.”

Mr Brown, a former Chancellor, also hit out at Mr Osborne.

He told his audience : "There are two kinds of chancellors: those who fail and those who get out in time.

“He can make up his mind which he wants to be."