Scottish Government People's Panel 2026-27 Event 3: The Cost of Living

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 2026-27 People’s Panel takes place against the backdrop of the Scottish Parliament election in May 2026; ongoing public service reform; 4 and a review of Scotland’s 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 the cost of living, which took place in June 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 approach

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 members discussed and reasoned about the topic, 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 third meeting of the People’s Panel, held on 4 June 2026, which focused on the cost of living.

This was selected as a topic because:

• The conflict in Iran, which started in February 2026, resulted in increases in the price of oil and gas, which were impacting on consumer prices. Broadly speaking, the conflict has made things more expensive for households. 7 This follows several years where the cost of living has been increasing, resulting in long-term cumulative impacts for households.
• While early effects of the crisis were already being felt – for example in impacts on fuel prices – other impacts of inflationary or supply chain risks were expected to intensify through 2026 and into 2027.
• There were opportunities for the findings to feed into the design of interventions intended to support households with the rising cost of living.
• A survey with Scottish households in May 2026 indicated that cost-of-living increases were of significant concern. 8
• People’s Panel members were asked in March 2026 what topics they would prioritise for panel discussion. They ranked ‘cost of living, poverty and inequality’ jointly highest with ‘health and social care’ as a future topic for discussion.

To inform the discussions, members were provided with a series of inputs including a briefing in advance of the meeting, and a short presentation at the start of the meeting. These inputs set out the current situation, how it was affecting different groups of people and some information about current Scottish Government policy proposals.

Panel members explored a common set of questions relating to: the impact of the cost of living on themselves and their families; their experience of support available for helping with the cost of living; and their views in relation to two potential new cost-of-living-related policies that were in development – namely, a social tariff for energy costs 9 and food price caps.

Attendance and participation

A total of 35 of the potential 40 panel members attended all or part of the session. Further details relating to participation in the 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), based on the views expressed during this session.