As much as I like to beat the Tories with a stick, the seed for this was planted long before the coalition came to office.
The newly unemployed were encouraged to work without pay for companies. In 2009, I refused after the Job Centre couldn't provide any guarantees that the companies were in it with genuine intentions to find suitable candidates, rather than profit from successive short term slave labour placements.
The only difference was that they hadn't yet gotten to the stage where they could withhold benefits for refusal, but they wouldn't admit that until challenged - I remember they presented the scheme in a manner where you could easily believe it was mandatory. Sure enough, articles started appearing in the press about this practise and, rather than stamp it out, the coalition enforced it!
