The Scottish Socialists have vowed to continue their campaign against waste in the new Scottish parliament building.

Socialist MSP Rosemary Byrne told ePolitix.com she and her colleagues had examined the possibility of boycotting the new building by locating their offices elsewhere.

"It would be extremely difficult for us to locate elsewhere given that everything is hooked up to work from the parliament base," she said. "But that is something that we thought about."

As they prepare to move into the £430 million building, the parliament's left-wingers say the money would have been better spent "on pensions, health and education... and investing in young people".

Ahead of October's opening ceremony, Byrne said Scots socialists would stay away from the party.

"Instead of money being spent on a big opening ceremony I’d rather have seen something extra for pensioners," the South of Scotland MSP told this website.

"We will be up on Calton Hill having a demonstration there. We will be pointing out that the devolved parliament is fine, but we need control of areas such as war, pensions and so on."

And she signalled that the debate over the siting of the parliament building will not go away.

"There are other buildings we could have used. We could have extended Calton Hill at much less cost and have something we were still proud of in the future," she said.

"We have gone too far with this parliament. It is far too expensive. We could have done better and saved money which we could have spent in other areas."

Byrne said her party would press the Scottish executive to reduce class sizes to 20, employ more teachers and more youth workers in the community.

She added that money saved through an alternative parliament could have been spent on "state of the art sports facilities" for Scotland's youth.