Labour policy on ending benefits freeze in confusion as Corbyn hints claimants will still lose out

Leader's spokesman says payments may not rise in line with inflation - just days after John McDonnell insisted they would

Labour’s policy on ending the benefits freeze has been plunged into confusion, after Jeremy Corbyn suggested claimants could still be left worse off.

A spokesman for the Labour leader said the party might not increase payments in line with inflation, which would leave some of the poorest people facing real-terms cuts.

The comment came despite John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, insisting only last week that Labour would fully uprate benefits – which are currently frozen for four years, until at least 2020.

The latest confusion follows sharp criticism of Labour’s leadership for failing to oppose the government’s plans for tax cuts which will go overwhelmingly to the better off.

And it echoes a similar row at last year’s election, when the party’s manifesto failed to give a commitment to ending the benefits freeze.

Yet Labour itself has highlighted how the policy is likely to strip £13bn of support from claimants over four years, far more than the £9bn estimated by the government.

The freeze hits jobseeker’s allowance, income support, employment support allowance and housing benefit, as well as child benefit and working tax credits.

Mr Corbyn went on the attack at prime minister’s questions in the Commons, saying: “The benefit freeze takes £1.5bn from 10 million low and middle-income households.

“A low-income couple with children will be £200 worse off. For them, there is no end to austerity. Labour would have ended the benefit freeze.”

But afterwards, asked precisely what Mr Corbyn meant, his spokesman said the policy was to “move off the freeze”, declining to say it meant inflation-proofed upratings.

“That means you start to increase benefits again,” he said, adding: “A freeze means off. If you turn it on again, you can turn it on to different degrees.”

At the Budget on Monday, the chancellor’s failure to rip up the policy was condemned by poverty campaigners as proof that austerity was continuing for benefit claimants.

Last week, speaking to the Daily Mirror, Mr McDonnell appeared to settle the row by saying it was Labour’s “intention” to fully uprate benefits from day one of a Labour government.

Asked if Labour would uprate benefits annually in line with inflation he said: "Yes, that’s what we’ve said.

At the Budget on Monday, the chancellor’s failure to rip up the policy was condemned by poverty campaigners as proof that austerity was continuing for benefit claimants.

A Labour spokesman later tried to insist there was no clash between the statements made by the party’s two most important figures.

“Our commitment is to end the social security freeze and uprate in line with inflation,” he said.

“The mechanism for our restructuring of the social security system and costings will be laid out in our next manifesto.”