In the current economic climate, any practical assistance is welcome and the government should be applauded for such an intervention if it helps provide respite for hard-pressed organisations.
At William Grant and Sons, we already have a group private medical insurance (PMI) scheme in place extending across all employees and, in many cases, their families too. We use an occupational health service for employment-related assessments and support. We offer various wellbeing and health-related support mechanisms, and we manage absence in a fair but robust fashion. The upshot is an absence level that will rarely reach, or exceed, 3%.
Will the advent of tax relief bring about any change to those practices? Quite simply, no.
However, the government’s initiative leads to other questions, some of which carry a more political dimension.
Why has the government made this a funding priority? Why is there a belief that there is a role for the government in this process, when it should, largely, lie in the domain of the employer? Is this about the usual ‘lowest common denominator’ approach, to bring up those employers that don’t do enough or positively encourage those that can’t afford to do more?
Either way, with close scrutiny of the use of scarce public funds and the whole notion of value for money, I would have thought there were more pressing (business) priorities elsewhere.
Indeed, with an ageing population, rampant medical inflation (which seems to constantly outstrip economic and wage inflation) and the challenges created by immigration and healthcare tourism, perhaps the government would have been better advised to focus such funds and resources on the NHS rather than tax relief for PMI provision.
But there is a strong sense in many quarters that, from the government’s perspective, that particular ship sailed some time ago.
Gary Brewer is head of reward and organisational development at William Grant and Sons
I do not believe the original concept of the Health and Work Service (HWS) was meant for organisations such as William Grant. It was aimed at SMEs who had no OH support and the rationale for government involvement was sound. Without early intervention, many employees can end up as a significant cost to the welfare state.
However, it now seems to have morphed into a national state funded provision for any employee with the GP being the main referral point not the employer or their OH provider.
An educated guess as to why this has happened might be that a contracting provider to the HWS would not get involved unless there was enough guaranteed potential revenue to interest them. Servicing non-guaranteed and random referrals from SMEs anywhere in the country is not very attractive.
There is a danger that this much wider scope will lead to unnecessary duplication of existing OH providers’ work which does seem a waste of money that could be better used elsewhere.
The question on tax relief is an interesting one that can only really be answered on the basis that private treatment – including that provided by the private patient units of the NHS -has a role to play in managing the health costs of people of working age.
If this is the case, then whether tax relief on private medical treatment should be made available and at what level should be based on economics. If the cost to the government of the tax relief is less than the cost of providing equivalent and timely state funded health care then economically it makes sense doesn’t it?
This is before taking into account the issue of those employees who receive no early medical intervention and as a result go on to cost the state significant amounts of health related benefits – the government’s starting point when the idea for the HWS was originally conceived.