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BRUTAL Con-Dem welfare cuts will have cost Scots a staggering £4.5billion by 2015.

And Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says £1billion of the eye-watering amount is being taken from measures aimed at helping children.

She used a Scottish Government analysis of the cuts, published yesterday, to claim that backing ­independence would rid the country of Conservative benefit slashers.

Chancellor George Osborne estimated the total impact of the cuts on ­Scotland between 2010 and 2015 would be £2.5billion.

But speaking at the SNP conference in Inverness, Sturgeon said she took anything the Tories said “with a healthy pinch of salt”.

She added: “I asked ­officials to check the figures and guess what? It seems the cumulative cut will not be £2.5billion.

“It will be £4.5billion, taken from the purses and wallets of hard-working people right across Scotland who can least afford it.

“Make no mistake, it will be hard-working people who will feel the pain. And ­disabled people too.”

The analysis showed cuts of £29million in 2010-11 grew to £302million in 2011-12 and £827million this financial year.

On current spending plans, cuts of £1.447billion will bite next year, reaching £2.062billion in 2014-15.

Sturgeon also revealed £1billion of the cuts in Scotland will be to benefits that directly help children.

These include abolishing the health in pregnancy grant, the abolition of child trust fund payments and the changes to income support and child benefit.

Sturgeon said: “That is equivalent to a cut of more than £1000 for every child.

“So there you have it – the awful price of letting ­Westminster control our resources and take our ­decisions for us.”

But a UK Government spokesman dismissed her figures as “unofficial, crude and misleading”.