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The work and pensions secretary has launched an all-out attack on Labour over housing benefit policies.
Iain Duncan Smith said in a Commons debate on the issue today that the official opposition's stance has been "atrocious and outrageous".
He cited Labour MP Chris Bryant's comment that a new cap of £400 per week on housing benefit payments would lead to the "social cleansing" of London as "disreputable".
Duncan Smith claimed the party wants to "frighten rather than inform", especially when Labour itself was planning a cap.
"They knew they would have to take measures," he told the House.
Questioned about the comments of the Mayor of London that he would fight any "Kosovo-style" attempts to clear the poor from central London, Duncan Smith said he agrees.
"He (Boris Johnson) was responding to scare stories and scare-mongering from Labour," IDS said.
Rejecting claims that London would become like Paris with the poorest in the outer boroughs, the work and pensions secretary said his plans for a cap on housing benefit only apply to private accommodation.
London has 800,000 social homes that will not be affected, he claimed.
Duncan Smith denied he has any plans to change to legal definition of homelessness.
He claimed the cap would drive down rents and in the process make more affordable housing available.
He said the previous government was "so slack" on housing benefit it allowed abuses of the system to occur.
Shadow work and pensions secretary Douglas Alexander opened the debate.
He said 4.7 million people get housing benefit: two million are pensioners, 500,000 are on jobseeker's allowance and 700,000 are in low-paid work.
Cuts to local housing allowances will mean 700,000 people will recieve £9 less per week, he told the House.
The cuts will hit every part of the country, but the government has yet to produce a comprehensive impact assessment.
Alexander said the coalition "has taken more money from the nation's families than from the nation's banks".
He questioned ministerial claims that housing benefit has risen by 50 per cent in a decade.
He questioned why plans for a national register of landlords have been scrapped and said the government's assertions that rents will drop is contradicted by the national landlords' association.
Pressed by Duncan Smith to distance himself from comments about "ethnic cleansing" in the capital, Alexander replied that if the proposals are passed unamended, "London will look very different in the years ahead".
He also said the housing benefit cap will provide £65m in cuts, while the department has to cut £1.8bn from the overall welfare budget.
Alexander conceded that Labour were planning a cap, but he would have wanted it to be phased in to give landlords and tenants time to adjust, and also introduced a regional element.
He said Duncan Smith's plans could well slash the budget but will lead to an explosion in the homelessness budget and are "rash and ill-considered".
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