Scottish Government People's Panel 2026-27 Event 2: Trust in Government
The People’s Panel 2026-27 brings together 40 members of the public from across Scotland, who meet online to discuss current public policy questions. This report presents findings from the meeting on 19 March 2026, when the Panel discussed what trust in Government means to people.
Footnotes
1 OECD (2026) Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions 2026 Results.
2 Scottish Government (2023) The People’s Panel: COVID-19 - Research findings from People’s Panel members on their experiences of the pandemic from March 2022 to March 2023
3 Scottish Government (2023) People’s Panel for Wellbeing 2022 and Beyond: process and learning evaluation
4 Scottish Government (2025) Scotland’s Public Service Reform Strategy: Delivering for Scotland
5 Scottish Government (undated) National Performance Framework: review and proposals
6 Escobar, O (2011) Public Dialogue and Deliberation. A communication perspective for public engagement practitioners, Beacons for Public Engagement.
7 Scottish Government (2024) Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2023 - Attitudes to Government, the Economy, and the Health Service; Scottish Government (2024) Scottish Household Survey 2023: trust in public institutions and Carnegie UK (2024) Life in the UK 2024 Scotland.
8 Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (2025) Restoring trust in our democracy: Our strategy for modern and secure elections; National Centre for Social Research (2025) BSA 42 - Britain’s democracy: A health check.
9 OECD (undated) Trust in government (last accessed: 13 August 2026); OECD (2026) Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions 2026 Results; European Union (2025) Standard Eurobarometer 103 - Spring 2025 (last accessed: 13 August 2026).
10 OECD (2024) OECD Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions - 2024 Results identifies trust in public institutions as a critical enabler of democratic legitimacy, effective policy delivery, and public cooperation over the long term.
11 Scottish Government policy frameworks, including the National Performance Framework, Open Government commitments and the Public Service Reform Strategy, explicitly position trust, transparency and legitimacy as core elements of good governance.
12 OECD (2026) Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions 2026 Results.
13 Examples include: Besley, T. and S. Dray (2024) Trust and State Effectiveness: The Political Economy of Compliance, The Economic Journal, 134(662):2225-2251; Grimmelikhuijsen, S. G. and A. J. Meijer (2014) Effects of Transparency on the Perceived Trustworthiness of a Government Organization: Evidence from an Online Experiment, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 24(1):137-157; Verhoest, K. et al. (2024) Trust and distrust in public governance settings: Conceptualising and testing the link in regulatory relations, Journal of Trust Research, 14(2):127-156.
14 Sortition Foundation webpage (last accessed: 30 July 2026).
15 Flanigan, B. et al (2021) Fair algorithms for selecting citizens’ assemblies, Nature.
Contact
Email: peoplespanel@gov.scot