Angela Rayner has refused to commit to Labour keeping the state pensions triple lock if the party takes power at the next general election.
The deputy Labour leader insisted the Opposition would not make unfunded spending commitments.
Asked on the BBC if she supports an eight percent rise in the state pension under the triple lock, she said: “The Tories promised that they would keep the triple lock. They’ve got to keep to that, they’re in government.
“When we’re in government, when we run up to the general election, when we’ve seen the finances, we will make sure that people are better off under Labour.
“We will not make spending commitments when we don’t know what the circumstances are.
“But the last Labour government took over a million pensioners out of poverty and the next Labour government will ensure that pensioners and children and everyone in the UK can get on.
“But we won’t do that if we’ve got stagnation and we don’t have a growth strategy like this government has failed to do at the moment.”
Pressed that Labour also pledged to keep the triple lock in 2019, she insisted the country is in “a very different place”.
She said: “What Labour has said is we’ll look at that in the run up to a general election but we will not make unfunded spending commitments because Liz Truss did that and she crashed the economy.
“She made unfunded tax cuts and it crashed our economy and working people paid the price of that.
“The Labour Party will secure our economy, grow the economy and have a real industrial strategy that means people can get on in life and businesses that want to invest in the UK can have the confidence to do so.”
Asked again if Labour is committed to keeping the triple lock, she said the party will “have to see where we are when we get to a general election and see the finances”.
She added: “We will not make unfunded spending commitments.”
