As the Guardian in their coverage of the proposals makes clear, this isn't the first time these sorts of ideas have entered the political debate. Last year saw similar ideas proposed in relation to those claimants with mental health problems though those have not resurfaced in this proposal.
The Guardian's report points out that DrugScope has been critical of previous moves to introduce benefit sanctions on people with drug and alcohol problems, both under this government and the previous one.
Indeed it has been pointed out to us that this government explicitly ruled out the approach they are now proposing, with Lord Freud telling the House of Lords:
First, it mandates claimants to do something, such as being tested for drugs, that is not directly about helping people to approach the labour market. That does not mean that entering treatment is not the right approach to help many claimants who are substance dependent to address their barriers to work, but-and this leads to my second reason-claimants enter treatment for a series of complex reasons, and whether or not they succeed also depends on a series of complex reasons. Forcing claimants to answer, for example, questions about possible drug use, requiring them to attend substance-related assessments about drug use and insisting that claimants enter a mandatory rehabilitation plan if they decline to enter treatment voluntarily would be asking them to do something a large proportion of them would not want to do. If we took the approach of the previous Government, we would create a high risk of those claimants immediately failing these requirements and having to be sanctioned.
