Dame Carol Black on Tax Relief

At the Cover & Protection conference yesterday, Dame Carol Black gave an update on the government’s health and wellbeing initiative.

She said that getting the Treasury to agree to tax relief on £500 employer spend for a clinical intervention to rehabilitate an employee was a major achievement.  I suggested to her and the audience that the cap of £500 bore no relation to clinical need and the fact that it could only be offered on recommendations by the new Independent Advisory Service after an absence of four weeks was a nonsense. We had a private chat later and in principal, I don’t think she disagreed with me and sounded quite frustrated.

I raised the same issue in a conversation with Paul Burstow MP another speaker who was up until last year, a Minister of State in the Department of Health.  He told me that the current government has no appetite in investing to save.

If only we could see the economic argument that the Treasury put forward in not allowing tax relief on any employer clinical spend on rehabilitation.