Failing to oppose legislation introducing a curb on tax credits will not prevent whoever is elected Labour leader taking a stand against the controversial measure later, a party spokesman insisted as interim leader Harriet Harman sought to calm a row over the party's stance.
Ms Harman has been criticised by three of the four leadership candidates for suggesting that there is a public appetite for Chancellor George Osborne's decision to limit support through tax credits and universal credits to two children.
She warned at the weekend that the party needed to get back in step with voters "on the economy and on benefits" and will tell MPs at a potentially stormy meeting later that they should abstain when the Bill introducing the measure comes to the Commons next week.
But with only Liz Kendall of the would-be leaders endorsing her approach the spokesman insisted it was not "binding the hands" of her permanent successor to oppose the measure when it is debated in detail later in the year.
And he said Labour would oppose other - deeper - cuts to tax credits such as changes to the thresholds set out by George Osborne last week and would vote against the Budget.
Leadership frontrunner Andy Burnham led the other candidates in calling on the party to oppose the cuts, saying that was "how Labour makes itself relevant. Labour wins when Labour speaks for everyone, for the whole and that's what it will do under my leadership.
"You don't allow a change that is going to take money off people in work who are trying to do the right thing."
Yvette Cooper said the tax credits were "an important part of making work pay" for many families.
"I think we can be credible and also say we are going to oppose the things that the Tories are doing which are going to hit work and hit people's incentives to work," she said.
Left-winger Jeremy Corbyn, who has set up an online petition against cuts to child tax credit said Mr Osborne's Budget had been "brutal and anti-young and anti the poorest in Britain".
But appearing in a televised leadership debate on the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme, Ms Kendall backed the two-child policy.
"People said to us 'We don't trust you on the money, we don't trust you on welfare reform'," she said.
"If we are going to oppose things we have to put something else in its place because if we carry on making the same arguments we have done over the last five years we will get the same result.
"We have to put forward a different credible alternative and Harriet was absolutely right to say that."
Ms Kendall said the cuts - which limit support through tax credits and universal credits to two children - needed to be accompanied by the introduction of a "genuine" living wage above that proposed by the Tories.
As Ms Harman prepared to address the weekly meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, the spokesman said that while the two-child rule was "not necessarily something we would be doing if we were in government" there was "an amount of public support" for it.
It was important for the party to show that it was "listening and learning" from its general election defeat, he suggested.
There were elements in the Welfare Reform and Work Bill - due for Second Reading debate in the Commons next week - that she felt it would be wrong to vote against, including action to create three million apprenticeships and to crack down on tax avoidance.
But detailed consideration of individual elements - including the tax credit changes - was expected only after the new leader was named on September 12. leaving open the option for them to order MPs to oppose it.