Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether his Department plans to produce an occupational health strategy for the NHS.

There is already an occupational health strategy in place for the National Health Service. Over the last few years, NHS organisations have been encouraged to improve the health and wellbeing of their staff based on local improvement plans which included access to occupational health services including, for example, counselling for stress and other mental health issues and rapid access physiotherapy for musculoskeletal illnesses.

This is being complemented by the £5 million initiative led by NHS England with NHS Employers and Public Health England to improve NHS staff health and wellbeing which includes, for example, “a new nationally-specified occupational health service for GPs suffering from burnout and stress, in partnership with the Royal College of GPs and BMA General Practitioners Committee”. Details of the NHS England programme can be found at:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/2015/09/nhs-workplace/