UNEMPLOYMENT in Colchester could be the biggest knock-on effect of spending cuts, a Government expert has warned.

Professor Paul Whiteley, who works in the Government department at Essex University, said the main concern was the likely number of job cuts.

He said the cuts would almost definitely have an impact on how people vote in future.

He continued: “It really is a time of uncertainty.

“We don’t know what is going to happen for universities yet, and probably won’t until the new year.

“When cuts like this have been introduced, which is not very often, usually it works out badly for the Government.

“After the First World War, the Prime Minister David Lloyd George made some savage cuts. Historians think this led to the big recession in the Twenties.”

The cuts were also a factor, he added, in the Tories losing the next General Election (although the government at the time had been a Lib-Con coalition, and Lloyd George a Liberal).

He said a similar financial situation occurred in 1979 when Labour, under James Callaghan, lost the election having had to go to the International Monetary Fund following major cuts in 1976.

Mr Whitely continued: “The cuts being made now are thought to be as bad as those were then.

“You are talking about half a million in the public sector and then another half a million jobs in the private sector as a knock on effect.

“That is going to affect a lot of people in a place like Colchester. That is going to be the challenge for the local authority, because when people are not working they cannot pay taxes and it goes on from there.”

He added the university’s psychology department was carrying out research into the effects of long-term employment.

He added: “Already they have found that if someone is out of work for six or seven years at a time, even if they then go back into work, the psychological damage of that period can stay with them for a long time.

“It should not be underestimated.”

He also explained while it might seem an option to carry on living in debt, this would mean the country would lose its ability to borrow from abroad because it would lose what is known as bond rights.

This is what has happened in Ireland, where the Government failed to hang on to these rights despite introducing its own severe cuts two years ago in a bid to reduce its own debt.