The Scottish Parliament has been working towards embedding deliberative democracy in its practice for several years. This includes holding several people’s panels and, as part of this process, they are independently evaluated by an external contractor, who is supervised and supported by SPICe. This guest blog captures key points and recommendations from the final evaluation report written by Iñaki Goñi and Elisabet Vives, who evaluated two People’s Panels which took place in 2024.
You can read more about the Scottish Parliament’s people’s panels and deliberative journey in our recent blog on the Climate Change People’s Panel. More blogs in this area are expected over the coming months as the Parliament finalises and shares its participation blueprint for Session 7.
As with all guest blogs, what follows are the views of the author and not those of SPICe, or of the Scottish Parliament.
Context for 2024 People’s Panels
The Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee produced a report on Embedding public participation in the work of the Parliament in autumn 2023. This was followed by two People’s Panels and the Committee suggested that one should be on a policy question, and one on post-legislative scrutiny. The People’s Panel on Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 took place in February and March 2024, and sought to explore the post-legislative scrutiny angle by answering the following two questions:
- How effective has the Scottish Government been at engaging the public on climate change and Scotland’s climate change targets?
- What else (if anything) could the Scottish Government do to inform and involve the public to help meet Scotland’s climate change targets?
The People’s Panel on Reducing Drug Harm and Deaths in Scotland ran in October and November 2024 and was tasked with answering “What does Scotland need to do differently to reduce drug related harms?”.
We were commissioned to independently evaluate these two panels. This gave us the opportunity to go beyond previous evaluations, which looked purely at the panel process and delivery. We were also able to assess how well the parliamentary services involved in delivering panels reacted to our feedback and suggestions. After the first panel, we worked with the Parliament’s delivery teams to support them in prioritising improvements in key areas. These improvements were built into the design of the second People’s Panel.
This blog post focuses on the key improvements made between the two panels, our assessment of these, and further recommendations for future deliberative processes.
Panel composition
People’s panels are selected to be broadly reflective of the demographics of the Scottish population, using characteristics like age, gender, ethnicity and education, among other things. In both panels, the Parliament also tasked its panel recruitment contractor, the Sortition Foundation, to include diversity of thought in selecting participants. This innovation made sure that people with a range of opinions on the panel topic were represented and was a valuable addition to the process.
Moving forward, we encourage the Parliament to consider using selection methods to complement the current random selection process, such as community-based selection approaches that prioritise those most affected by the issues under discussion.
Evidence provision
After the first panel, we recommended that the Parliament go through a detailed topic and stakeholder mapping exercise before engaging with the Stewarding Board (the expert group set up to advise on the panel design). Facilitators did so for the second panel, which helped to frame the scope of the panel and guide the selection of evidence providers. This led to more evidence being used from the third sector and people with lived experience. Participants said this helped them to better understand the impact of drug harms and deaths.
We made several other suggestions, including combining evidence provision sessions with deliberation, reducing the number of experts to increase the time panels had with them, and making the role of each evidence session in exploring the topic clearer. These changes were made, and we feel they improved the second panel and should continue to be used.
Going forward, we think it’s important that the Parliament considers inviting people who may be negatively affected by the policies proposed so there is an even greater balance of views. We also suggest that guidance is needed for expert presenters so that they feel able to present the trade-offs between different alternatives, rather than conveying a sense of certainty.
Design and facilitation
After the first panel we made several recommendations, which the Parliament attempted to build into the second panel. These included:
- breaking down complex concepts in framing questions
- prioritising the final plenary deliberation and voting
- adopting a phased approach to selecting recommendations, beginning with an initial vote to identify early agreement and disagreement and then iteratively refining more consensual proposals
- simplifying the panel’s role by focusing solely on recommendation-making, avoiding the complexities of a dual scrutiny and recommendation role.
However, some recommendations were not fully implemented. The final plenary session did not include dedicated time for deliberation, which led to some dissatisfaction from participants expecting to have a say in the final plenary. This final deliberation was crucial for participants, and understandably so. They saw the wording of the recommendations as the tangible outcome of their efforts, determining the initiative’s success or failure. For them, ensuring enough time for the final deliberation was a top priority.
Impact on participants
Overall, participants were extremely positive about their experience of taking part in a People’s Panel. Feedback from both Panels, as has been the case for past panels, was consistent around the excellent care given by the organising team, which participants identified as a key element for success. Overall, the feedback from participants suggested that deliberative panels enhance one’s sense of self-worth as a citizen.
There was, though, one recurring issue: participants entered the process with reservations about MSPs’ motivations. After the first panel we recommended incorporating structured opportunities for participants to express their concerns about trust in Parliament. We acknowledge that the lack of trust in politicians is an issue that goes beyond Scotland, but we wanted citizens to have the chance to express their concerns before and during their participation in the panel.
In response, facilitators introduced an exercise asking participants to describe Parliament in one word. However, many interpreted this as referring to the physical building rather than the institution itself. We encourage the Parliament to continue exploring ways for participants to express any issues in relation to lack of trust and for Parliament to directly address them.
The impact of People’s Panels
People’s panels are just one of many inputs shaping committees’ work, and Committees are just one of the inputs informing Scottish Government policy. This can mean that the influence of people’s panels is indirect and complex. In the first panel, we observed a stark contrast between this complexity of influencing parliamentary decision-making and the more straightforward expectations of citizens.
The Parliament took steps to address several of our recommendations regarding the expectations of impact on parliamentary processes. The complexity of political impact was explained to participants using more creative methods, and Parliament employed a creative approach to illustrate this process, having citizens role-play as a committee on the first day.
Going forward, Parliament could explore new ways of explaining impact, such as videos or presentations that illustrate cases where recommendations were adopted and cases where they were not, including explanations of why certain recommendations were not taken forward. Sometimes examples are the best way to foster understanding.
One key recommendation that was not implemented was setting a process for data collection and analysis after the Committee had concluded its work. There are, instead, plans to develop an “impact framework” to explore the effects of participation on parliamentary scrutiny, aiming to improve feedback loops. While this is a positive step, we still think that effective post-implementation evaluation is needed to better understand and communicate long-term impact.
Conclusion: The case for continuous improvement in deliberation
The Scottish Parliament’s approach to deliberation is responsive and tailored, with processes that demonstrate an exceptional ability to adapt to citizens’ emerging ideas, adjust materials guiding deliberation, and meet evidence needs. We saw first-hand the Parliament taking on our feedback and making improvements between the two People’s Panels we evaluated.
There are practical lessons to learn from the Scottish Parliament’s approach to people’s panels. By continuously refining its processes in response to participant experiences, expert insights, and institutional learning, the Parliament has demonstrated that effective deliberation requires more than simply following a predefined blueprint.
Rather than adopting standardised off-the-shelf deliberative designs, the Parliament has built an in-house capacity to experiment, iterate, and respond to the specific needs of each panel. Institutional learning is at the core of this approach. The ability to recognise and address gaps, such as participant concerns about parliamentary impact or the need for more structured final deliberations, demonstrates the value of treating deliberation as a process of continuous improvement. Investing in internal expertise, rather than relying solely on external models and providers, allows for deeper integration of deliberation within the parliamentary system and fosters trust in the institution’s commitment to meaningful engagement.
Looking to the wider deliberative landscape, the success of deliberative processes will depend on how well institutions embrace this adaptive mindset. By prioritising learning, experimentation, and responsiveness over replication, the Scottish Parliament sets a valuable precedent for deliberative democracy; one that recognises that the best designs are those that grow and evolve with the workers that put in the effort and with the people they serve.
Iñaki Goñi and Elisabet Vives, University of Edinburgh