How long does income protection pay out for?

You can either arrange a policy that lasts until your retirement age (there may be a cap as to what age you can be covered to) or you can arrange a policy that only pays for a limited time. As an example this could be 2 years, after claiming for 2 years the policy would then stop paying any benefit, if you return to work you may be able to claim again on the same policy in the future