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Publication - Research and analysis

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

Published
9 September 2026
From
Chief Social Researcher, +2 more … Director-General Exchequer, Strategy and Performance, Minister for Parliamentary Business and Veterans
Directorate
Performance, Delivery and Resilience Directorate
Topic
Cost of living crisis, Economy, Energy
ISBN
9781807754907

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 the cost of living and impacts of rising costs.

View supporting documents Supporting documents

Footnotes

  1. The Scottish Government does not decide energy pricing, which is a UK government responsibility. The Scottish Government Social Tariff Working Group developed recommendations for the UK government on the design of a ‘social tariff’ for domestic energy users. The Scottish Government will use evidence from the Panel to inform these discussions.

  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 (last accessed: 28 July 2026).

  5. Scottish Government (undated) National Performance Framework: review and proposals (last accessed: 28 July 2026).

  6. Escobar, O (2011) Public Dialogue and Deliberation. A communication perspective for public engagement practitioners, Beacons for Public Engagement.

  7. Harari, D. (2026) Economic update: Middle East conflict and the UK economy, House of Commons Library (last accessed: 13 August 2026).

  8. Scottish Government (2026) Public attitudes to cost of living and other topics: tracker – data tables (last accessed: 13 August 2026).

  9. The Scottish Government does not decide energy pricing, which is a UK government responsibility. The Scottish Government has proposed to the UK government that it should implement a ‘social tariff’ for energy costs, and will use evidence from the Panel to inform these discussions.

  10. The small size of the Panel means that formal subgroup analysis is not possible. The groups highlighted here were identified based on themes emerging from panel members’ discussions.

  11. The Scottish Government social tariff working group developed recommendations to put to the UK government on the design of a social tariff for domestic energy consumers. The group was active between November 2024 and April 2025.

  12. webpage (last accessed: 13 August 2026).

  13. Flanigan, B. et al (2021) Fair algorithms for selecting citizens’ assemblies Nature.

Contact

Email: peoplespanel@gov.scot

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