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Britain’s economy is “increasingly vulnerable”, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has warned, as Rachel Reeves prepares to mount another autumn tax raid.

In a stark warning about the state of the public finances, the Government’s fiscal watchdog signalled the triple lock on pensions and other spending promises were unaffordable as rising debt, demands for higher defence spending, and an older and sicker population pile increasing pressure on the Chancellor.

The OBR also said Labour’s about-turns on winter fuel payments and scaling back welfare had created “new downside risks” for the economy.

Working families face another £12bn tax shock unless Ms Reeves brings down a post-lockdown surge in health and disability benefit claims, the watchdog said.

It warned pension funds and other investors were increasingly likely to shun UK debt in favour of shares and other investments in a move that could blow a further £22bn black hole in her borrowing plans.

The warning about unsustainable spending commitments comes as Labour backbenchers push for higher wealth taxes to pay for a growing welfare bill, a move that Downing Street has refused to rule out.

The OBR’s bleak prognosis pushed Britain’s borrowing costs above the levels reached when Ms Reeves cried in the House of Commons last week, with 30-year gilt yields jumping by the most of any major European economy.

The cost of borrowing over 30 years rose to highs of 5.47pc, well above the peak of 5.44pc last Wednesday when traders were speculating over the Chancellor’s future.

In a damning verdict, the OBR said successive Tory and Labour governments had failed to make any progress on tackling public debt.

“The scale and array of risks to the UK fiscal outlook remains daunting,” the OBR said in its latest Fiscal Risks report.

Richard Hughes, the OBR’s chairman, added that Britons faced losing benefits they had come to take for granted.

Asked whether the triple lock on the state pension was sustainable, he said: “When you project trends in both pension spending and health spending forward, the UK public finances are in an unsustainable position in the long run.

“The UK cannot afford the array of promises that it has made to the public if you just leave those unchanged, based on a reasonable assumption about growth in the economy and tax.”

The OBR said the state pension triple lock was already on course to cost taxpayers three times more than originally thought.

Initial projections showed that guaranteeing payments rise by the highest of earnings, inflation or 2.5pc would cost taxpayers £5.2bn a year by the end of the decade, it said.

But soaring inflation and a series of financial shocks meant this bill would actually reach £15.5bn a year by the next election compared with if payments were simply tied to earnings.

A volatile economy could keep pushing up the annual cost to £43bn a year in today’s money by the early 2070s, the OBR said.

Mr Hughes said the Chancellor’s £9.9bn financial buffer to meet her already loose borrowing rules was not enough, with the UK now extremely vulnerable to economic shocks.

He highlighted that her predecessors had set aside as much as £80bn, which also “turned out to be not enough, because many of those fiscal rules ended up being breached.”

The Chancellor is under pressure to bring down Britain’s ballooning debt pile, with speculation mounting about tax rises and spending cuts in the autumn.

The OBR said: “The UK’s fiscal position is increasingly vulnerable by both historical and international standards, limiting the scope to respond to future economic and other shocks.”

The watchdog signalled there was little room for Ms Reeves to relax borrowing rules further and warned the battle to tame Britain’s ballooning debt would only get harder.

The report said: “Planned tax rises have been reversed and, more significantly, planned spending reductions have been abandoned.

“The more persistent fiscal deficits and ratcheting up of debt that resulted have been accommodated by successive loosening of the fiscal rules.”