Did you know that there's a private members' bill to bring back national service?

Most people only heard about it last week, after a news story that The Alan Titchmarsh Show had booked the president of the Cambridge Union to debate national service in their "Daily Ding Dong" feature, then cancelled her because she wasn't a man.

How daft. If they hoped for emotive personal testimony on a specifically male self-image, they should not have approached the Cambridge Union. Debating societies are not about what you (heaven forbid) "feel", but how well you argue.

Still, you can't expect too much commitment to the niceties of serious debate from a feature called "Daily Ding Dong".

It's television. We have to respect the creative industries' right to "cast" performances, outside the normal workplace rules of non-discrimination. In practice, of course, this seems to mean endless inventive reasons why a woman, or an older woman, or more than one woman, would be inappropriate for almost everything – but a generational change is surely inevitable and, in the meantime, putting up with these "creative decisions" is less bad than the alternative.

What's more interesting is why The Alan Titchmarsh Show wanted to discuss national service at all.

This bill will never get through. An era when brave young servicemen and women are being daily killed and injured during the relentless fallout of a ghastly illegal war is no time to sell voters on something that even vaguely smacks of forcing their kids to join the army.

Even those who don't have children and despise everyone else's must recognise that we don't need untrained cannon fodder any more. The future of the British military lies in highly trained computer programmers, probably no more than 12 of them. (No disrespect to the military; you could say the same about pretty much everything else.)

Besides, private members' bills never get through. This particular old chestnut, which I remember debating when I was at school, would cost millions to subsidise and I believe that our last national bank statement read: "Minus a trillion."

So, why do daytime television and its viewers think there is anything to discuss? Sadly, I think there is a wave of popular appeal in compelling anyone to do anything.

That certainly appears to be the view of policymakers. They keep coming up with ideas rooted in compulsion and coercion: the Tories demanding manual labour in return for dole money, for example, or the idea mooted at the Labour conference to remove child benefit from those who refuse the MMR jab.

They wouldn't be doing this if focus groups didn't tell them it might fly. In times of poverty and struggle, people harden towards others. Nobody wants to be compelled to do anything themselves, but there is some comfort in the thought of others being.

Those who are thrilled by the stern finger and enforced obedience might be disappointed to know that the national service bill, proposed by Philip Hollobone (Con, Kettering), would not actually oblige people to do military service.

The obligation is a year of time, between 18 and 26, for charitable work or public service, in which the armed forces would be an option alongside the emergency services, the NHS, elderly or disabled care, social action and overseas development.

The scope of the scheme would include "educational assistance for those participants who have yet to attain basic educational requirements of reading and writing in English and mathematics", as well as "instruction to attain basic levels of fitness, personal discipline, smart appearance, self-respect and respect for others.".

I can't help finding something amusing in this. Mr Hollobone is openly admitting that he does not trust the school system, under his own party's government, to turn out people who can read, write, count, jog, dress themselves or be nice to people.

Just think about that for a moment. He intends to stand up and suggest, to his own party leader, that the children of this prime ministerial generation are likely to leave school obese, illiterate and nasty.

I'll make my own admission: I thought there might be something well-meaning in this bill. After all, some people always slip through the net and leave school underskilled in literacy or numeracy. I also like the idea of incorporating social conscience and charitable awareness into young people's education.

The problem is that 18-26 is not actually young, unless you're an ageing politician (or columnist). These people are adults; 18 is too late to compel anyone to learn anything. The brain is no longer fully formative and the person must be free.

Nevertheless, I did think the bill might be coming from a kindly place. The loudest current "solutions" to social problems seem to be blame and cuts; could this be, at least, a refreshing attempt to offer practical help, with an eye to social cohesion instead of division? And then I read a bit more about Mr Hollobone. He has another private members' bill on the table, seeking to restore the death penalty. He'd like to privatise the BBC. He seeks to ban the burqa and refuses to meet constituents who wear it.

This is not one of your cheery, kindly, well-meaning libertarian Tories. He's an old school, hang-'em-and-flog-'em bully. This bill doesn't have a soft heart; it has a purple face, shrieking over a Courvoisier that a generation of nancies needs to man up a bit.

If we're going to start talking about public service, curriculum charity work, adult literacy or any of the aspects of the bill that might ring people's bells, it is important to know this about the man behind it.

Otherwise, it's like accepting a dinner invitation because you like the sound of the pudding, without knowing that the host is that boy who used to beat you up at school.

www.victoriacoren.com