Honeymoons tend to be a sweet time: limited but remembered with fondness. Political honeymoons can be short and soon forgotten. I fear that the legacy of some of the early actions of the coalition government will have a sour and long lasting effect on many communities.

I am thinking in particular of two specific sets of actions - both of which are borne out of the government drive to cut public spending very deep and very fast.

The first relates to the axing of capital spending programmes impacting on new affordable housing and building schools for the future. Of course, we have only seen the thin end of a very big wedge so far in terms of the public spending cuts. Worse is yet to come with the comprehensive spending review announcement in late October. My concerns, which I suspect will be shared by increasing numbers as the full force of these choices by government begin to be felt, fall into two separate categories.

Feeling deflated

First, slashing capital spending on new homes and schools directly hits the private sector and construction industry jobs will be shed. The deflationary implications for the wider economy are clear and there is a real danger that this will contribute to halting the fragile recovery and push the country back into recession. These actions from the coalition are the responses of former American president Herbert Hoover in the early 1930s which had disastrous consequences for the US and world economy. Not so the enlightened and successful initiatives from his successor, Franklin D Roosevelt.

My second set of concerns are about people and communities. Cuts to the numbers of new affordable homes and to the building schools for the future scheme will have long-term impacts with worsened outcomes for children and families.

The other housing-related policy area where the government is to wield the axe is housing benefit. There can be no question that this thorny area requires attention and action - the fact that the national housing benefit budget has quadrupled points to a structural problem. Those who oppose the current changes cannot be seen simply to defend the indefensible. However, the way in which the cap on housing benefit levels will work in London rings massive alarms for me.

The basic problem is that private sector rents in central and inner London are frequently way above the new housing benefit cap limits. Private landlord rents in a number of outer London boroughs, particularly in east London and in my own borough of Barking & Dagenham, are generally below the cap figures. For households in low paid jobs receiving housing benefit which are now facing the prospect of having to make up an enormous shortfall resulting from lower housing benefit support, the choices are stark. They either move to smaller private rented homes in the areas where they now live, inflicting overcrowding on themselves, or they up sticks and move miles away.

Capital concerns

London Councils has calculated that 19,500 households will be caught by the housing benefit cap reductions. A high percentage of these households are those for whom their local councils have determined there is a homelessness duty. The housing staff in these boroughs are now in an invidious position - they have a responsibility but cannot discharge this within their own areas because of the relationship between private rents and the housing benefit limits. The likely outcome will inevitably be to seek out landlords in the low rent areas and uproot families, irrespective of local connections. This will displace children from their schools, break links with GPs and sever all the other networks of local support that people build up.

The unfairness to such families who are already marginalised is evident to all reasonable and caring people. But there is an added unfairness to the receiving councils, with, in some instances, households with high social and care needs effectively dumped into their boroughs. This could end up with a ‘Balkanised’ city - the poor being cleansed from the richer parts of town and deposited into the poorest with the lowest private rents. It conjures up a notion of modern social cleansing.

A good mixture

Call me naïve but I thought a consensus existed between all the major political parties around the desirability of creating and sustaining communities of mixed incomes - not towns and cities that are ever more segregated into affluent areas and places where deprivation is concentrated. It seems that the parties in the coalition no longer share this more cohesive vision of society.

I’ve no doubt that some reading this article might be thinking that there is no alternative to the cuts in new affordable housing programmes, BSF and drastic housing benefit caps. I do not agree. There are choices open to governments: the balance between tax rises and spending cuts, the dangers of cutting so hard and so fast and, finally, choosing which areas of spending to cut. Long after the honeymoon is over, the public will be left pondering these issues.

When you add up these policies you get a sense of foreboding as to what lies ahead - a future of profound economic rupture; of deep social recession and upheaval. As always, it will be the poor and the poorest areas that take the strain. It shouldn’t have to be this way. Why is it always the little guy that has to pick up the bill?

John Cruddas is Labour MP for Dagenham

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