CITY councillors will be asked to ‘renounce’ the UK ever using nuclear weapons first during any conflict at a meeting next week.

Oxford City Council is a member of the Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA), which promotes multilateral nuclear disarmament. That has about 40 members.

Labour councillor John Tanner will ask the authority to agree it is ‘particularly concerned about the huge cost to the taxpayer of nuclear weapons’.

He will also ask them to agree the authority is worried about ‘the risk posed by other regular transport of nuclear weapons on Oxfordshire’s roads and the continued threat of nuclear war’.

Campaigners have claimed replacing the UK’s Trident nuclear deterrent will cost at least £205bn.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament said it calculated the figure by looking at official answers in the House of Commons and the previous costs of items such as nuclear warheads and taking nuclear reactors apart.

Mr Tanner will encourage his colleagues to agree that they ‘regret the governments of existing nuclear weapon states, including the UK’ refuse to support a treaty to ban nuclear weapons.

If his motion is successful, the city council’s chief executive Gordon Mitchell will be asked to write to the UK Government and Oxford’s two MPs to ‘inform them of the resolution and to urge them to take appropriate action’.

Mr Tanner’s motion is expected to be discussed at an Oxford City Council meeting on Monday, April 29.