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We don't compel convicted criminals to 'pay' for their crimes in any meaningful way or even to work to pay all or as much as possible of what it costs to convict and then detain them; why should anyone else be compellable by the State to work, for free or otherwise? I spent most of my professional life in education at various levels, and would never have worked for free; if a service is pro bono publico, then the public collectively must be prepared to fund it, with their taxes. This is what government is for, but minimising taxes has gradually (not because of 'austerity') become the main aim of most of those who wish to govern - autocrats, paternalists, dictators, anything but democrats who want to provide what the people decide to vote for after they have been give what they can trust as an honest estimate of what various services will cost.
Unless there is almost no unemployment, someone who can afford to work for nothing will probably be taking a work opportunity away from someone who needs to 'earn their bread'. For those who cannot do that, the electorate voted a welfare system, paid for from their taxes, something the Tories have long sought an excuse to diminish. Working for free for special causes that, however necessary to some, can never reasonably be expected to be funded by the general public, despite how desirous it is of the needs being met, is the real 'bono publico', and we should not let self-serving politicians weasel their way out of raising as much in taxes as public demand for services requires, by reducing the size and cost of the State they run, though not the rewards they take for running it, on the pretext that there exists some special duty for some of those who were paid to provide State services, instead to provide them for free.