Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the policy paper entitled Transforming Support: The Health and Disability White Paper published on 15 March 2023, what estimate his Department has made of the cost of testing a financial incentive and support model to encourage employers to purchase occupational health services.

Access to Occupational Health (OH) services can play an important role in reducing economic inactivity by supporting disabled people, and people with health conditions, to stay and succeed in work.

The Government has committed to testing a financial incentive and market navigation support scheme, to gather evidence on whether this is effective in increasing access to OH for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and the self-employed.

In the Spring Budget, the Government announced it will expand the forthcoming OH financial incentive and market navigation test. There is up to £25 million available to test a small-scale financial incentive alongside market navigation support tools to encourage the uptake of OH services. This test is currently in development and is being designed through iterative user testing.