Scottish Government People's Panel 2026-27 Event 2: Trust in Government

1 Introduction

The Scottish Government is committed to increasing public participation in policy making, providing people with opportunities to shape government decisions that will affect them. This is supported through a range of approaches including consultations, citizens’ assemblies and People’s Panels.

In 2022-23 the Scottish Government established a People’s Panel to explore public experiences during the COVID-19 recovery period and other significant issues such as the cost of living and community resilience.^[2] An independent evaluation found that participation in the Panel had positive impacts for the panel members, and highlighted strong support within Scottish Government to establish a People’s Panel approach as a regular part of policy making.^[3]

As such, the 2026-27 Scottish Government People’s Panel was established to provide policy makers with access to public perspectives on strategic policy questions and policy design issues. It enables members of the public to share their views, experiences and priorities at a stage where these can inform policy development and decision-making.

The Panel takes place at an important time for Scotland. It takes place alongside the Scottish Parliament election in May 2026; ongoing public service reform^[4] and a review of Scotland’s National Performance Framework (NPF)^[5] which helps shape national priorities and measure progress on wellbeing.

These developments also come at a time when many people continue to face cost-of-living pressures and uncertainty about the future, shaped by wider economic challenges and international events. Together, these factors create a strong case for ensuring that public perspectives help inform government priorities and decision-making. The People’s Panel provides a valuable opportunity to understand people’s experiences, concerns and aspirations, and to ensure these views are reflected in the development of policy.

1.1 About the Scottish Government People’s Panel

The Scottish Government People’s Panel provides a way for the Scottish Government to hear directly from members of the public. The Panel aims to provide policy makers with in-depth lived experience perspectives during policy development. Their views and experiences can help policy makers understand public priorities, identify potential challenges or unintended consequences, and consider how policies may affect different groups. The findings can then be synthesised alongside other sources of evidence to support policy design and development.

Panel members were invited to take part in six online meetings over the course of 2026-27. The first three meetings of the Scottish Government People’s Panel 2026-27 took place in February, March and June 2026, with the remaining meetings scheduled for September 2026, November 2026 and January 2027.

In preparation for each panel session, the research team works with Scottish Government colleagues to develop discussions on key policy questions where public perspectives could help inform current thinking or policy design. The first three panel discussions focused on:

• Panel 1: Reform of the National Performance Framework;
• Panel 2: Trust in government;
• Panel 3: The cost of living.

Topics selected for the remaining meetings will continue to reflect Scottish Government priorities, Panel interests, and areas where there is current scope and need for public perspectives to contribute to policy development and decision-making.

This report presents findings from the Panel meeting on trust in government, which took place in March 2026.

1.2 Approach and method

Dialogue-based research

Dialogue-based research^[6] allows people from a wide range of backgrounds to engage with complex policy questions, regardless of their prior knowledge or expertise. Participants are provided with balanced information to support their understanding of the topic, and are given opportunities to ask questions, explore different perspectives, and provide feedback and challenge. The insights that this kind of process generates can help government understand public views about a policy proposition, as well as generating new ideas or flagging concerns that can support better policy design.

Recruitment

The People’s Panel is a research panel consisting of 40 members of the public, plus a group of reserves, recruited through a democratic ‘random lottery’ approach. This recruitment process was managed by the Sortition Foundation and is designed to ensure fairness and diversity in representation.

The Panel has been designed to broadly reflect the diversity of Scotland’s population in terms of gender, age, geographic spread, socio-economic background, ethnicity, disability, and range of political views – as far as is possible within the limitations of the sample size. Further methodological detail is provided in Annex A.

Panel process

Panel members were invited to take part in six meetings over the course of 2026-27. The Panel is intended to provide qualitative insight into public perspectives on complex policy questions, rather than to produce statistically representative findings. The Panel is not expected to reach consensus during discussions – the emphasis is on sharing and discussing different perspectives.

In advance of each event, the research team works closely with relevant Scottish Government teams to identify discussion topics for the Panel. Topics are selected to reflect current strategic government priorities. Panel members have also been asked what topic areas they would prioritise for discussion. Discussion topics should be broad enough to affect a wide range of people across Scotland. They are also areas where insights from lived experience currently have the potential to make a valuable contribution to policy development and decision-making. This means engaging the Panel at a point where there are clear opportunities for public input to inform future thinking – such as when policy is being developed or under review.

Before each event, panel members receive accessible briefing materials on the discussion topic. Participants who need additional support are provided with technology or assistance to access online meetings to ensure that they are able to participate fully in the discussions.

Each meeting includes a short presentation on the discussion topic, followed by facilitated small group discussions. Representatives from teams which engaged with the Panel during previous sessions are invited to return to explain how the Panel findings have been used and what difference they have made to policy development or decision-making.

Members explore a series of questions in facilitated small group discussions, followed by a plenary feedback session. Discussions are supported by trained facilitators, with panel members’ views, reactions and responses captured by a note-taker and transcribed using Microsoft Teams.

To thank panel members for their time and commitment, they receive monetary compensation or a shopping voucher for each full meeting that they attend.

Analysis

Following each People’s Panel event, detailed notes and transcripts are used for thematic analysis. This involves systematically coding the data, grouping similar codes together and developing themes that capture important meanings or insights about the research topics. Data, including quotes, are anonymised in the coding process.

Quotes are used throughout this report to illustrate key perspectives from the participants. Descriptive terms such as “some”, “many” or “most” are used to reflect patterns observed within panel discussions. These terms are intended to convey the prominence of views within the discussions and should not be interpreted as statistical measurements.

Further methodological details are provided in Annex A.

Scope and limitations

While the Panel reflects a wide range of backgrounds and experiences, and is designed to reflect Scotland’s diversity, it nevertheless constitutes a small qualitative sample. The findings should therefore be interpreted as providing in‑depth insight into how this group of people discussed and reasoned about trust in government, rather than as a firm representation of public opinion in Scotland as a whole. Because the participation is designed to be broad, it does not represent the specific opinions of any given target group.

This report reflects the views of the panel members – a group which may represent a higher than average level of interest in politics and government. Some expectations expressed by the Panel, for example around cross‑checking information, engaging with evidence, or following detailed explanations, may therefore represent a higher level of policy interest and engagement than might be realistic for all members of the public.

In addition, the session did not seek to test findings against wider public attitudes or existing evidence. The insights should therefore be understood as context‑specific, exploratory and indicative, rather than definitive.

1.3 Focus and context of this report

This report presents findings from the second meeting of the Scottish Government People’s Panel 2026-27, which focused on trust in government. The session explored what trust means to people, what builds or damages it, and how government behaviour, decision‑making and communication shape public trust.

This was selected as a topic because:

• levels of trust in government are widely understood to be at a historical low in Scotland,^[7] the UK,^[8] and internationally;^[9]
• trust is closely linked to democratic consent, effective policy delivery and long‑term public cooperation;^[10]
• building trust is a stated priority across the Scottish Government’s approach to good governance, including commitments linked to the NPF, public service reform and open government;^[11]
• the findings are intended to inform thinking ahead of the next parliamentary session, including what practical actions government can take to support trust.

In order to inform the discussions, panel members were provided with introductory material and a short presentation at the start of the meeting, setting out why trust matters, how it affects government effectiveness, and how the issue was being framed for discussion in a Scottish context. This framing helped anchor the discussions that followed. Participants then explored a common set of questions as noted in Annex B.

How ‘trust in government’ is used in this report

When discussing trust, panel members often moved between thinking about:

• individual politicians or political parties, and
• institutions of government, including public bodies and services.

These distinctions were not always made explicitly, and in many cases panel members appeared to use examples of individual behaviour as a way of expressing wider judgements about government more broadly.

For clarity, this report uses the term “trust in government” to refer to trust in both individuals and institutions, unless otherwise stated. However, it is worth noting that participants’ initial responses to questions about trust more often focused on the behaviour of individual politicians, before broadening to institutions and systems.

Attendance and participation

A total of 37 of the potential 40 panel members attended all or part of the session. Further details relating to participation in this session are set out in Annex B.

Structure of the report

The report is structured to:

• present the findings from the panel discussions (Section 2), and
• draw out key considerations for government (Section 3), including a suggested code of behaviour for how government communicates and engages with the public based on the views expressed during this session.