The opposition is not going to um oppose the government's Welfare Bill

Labour's acting leader Harriet Harman has revealed the party will not oppose the government's plans to scrap child tax credits for more than two children or the lowering of the household benefits cap.

Despite being um the leader of the opposition, Harman told BBC1's Sunday Politics that the public didn't want to see "blanket opposition" from Labour.

In last week's Budget, chancellor George Osborne unveiled £12billion worth of cuts to the welfare budget, including on child tax credits and the maximum amount of benefits people can receive.

Harman said:

We won't oppose the Welfare Bill. We won't oppose the household benefit cap.

For example what [the Tories have] brought forward in relation to restricting benefits and tax credits for people with three or more children.

What we've got to do is listen to what people round the country said to us and recognise that we didn't get elected, again.

This wasn't a blip, this was the second time we haven't got elected and actually what people don't want us to do… is blanket opposition.

They want us to actually be specific about what we're going to be challenging and holding the government to account on.

But more than that, they want us to listen to their concerns and we've got to recognise why it was that the Tories are in government and not us.

Which is, not because people love the Tories particularly but because they didn't trust us on the economy and on benefits. We have to listen to that and respond to that.

She went on to say:

We can't simply say to the public: 'you were wrong, we're going to carry on saying what we were saying before the election' - we have to listen to that and the temptation is always to oppose everything. You know, 'it wasn't our ideas in the Budget we must oppose it lock stock and barrel'. But that doesn't make sense, and we have to wake up and recognise that this was not a blip, we've had a serious defeat [and] we must listen to why.

Harman will remain leader of Labour until the party chooses a permanent successor to Ed Miliband at its autumn conference.

Osborne meanwhile has been accused of appropriating some of Miliband's best ideas (ending non-dom tax status and introducing a national living wage) in his own Budget.

More: 8 things in the Budget that didn't make the headlines