Will the Tories really dock benefits from obese people and those with drug or alcohol addictions if they refuse treatment? Even though David Cameron reaffirmed his commitment to the policy in his speech in Hove yesterday, anyone who is getting rather over-excited about it could probably expend their energy on something else as this looks suspiciously like one of those policy kites that gets flown from time to time. In the Times today, I point out that the idea cropped up several times under Labour as well as the Tories.
The reason that this latest incarnation of the ‘sick people, get treatment or lose benefits’ policy might not ever become a proper policy is that it’s just one of the proposals in the review that Dame Carol Black is conducting. Over the weekend, many were struck by the rather different language that Iain Duncan Smith used when he was asked about the plan on Marr.
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