Minimum Income Guarantee: Experts by Experience Panel report

Panel eight: consolidating overarching themes

The aims of this panel meeting focused on:

• Reviewing live decisions for the Expert Group, where their current position had been developed drawing on the work of the Expert by Experience Panel.
• To review overarching themes that have been drawn out across all previous seven sessions of the panel. The review of these themes was the first step towards developing a set of draft principles that reflect the work of the Experts by Experience Panel. These themes were presented to the panel by Evelyn Bowes, Principal Research Officer, Scottish Government.

Panel members considered four live decisions the Expert Group were seeking experiential input on. This included a consideration of the Minimum Income Guarantee and the rates and methods of ensuring workers are paid a fair wage. Members stressed the importance of equitable minimum wages for workers of all ages, including for those on apprenticeship programs, recognised the supportive but potentially limited role of trade unions, and voiced concerns about employers potentially reducing wages due to the Minimum Income Guarantee, especially in small enterprises.

During discussions on piloting the Minimum Income Guarantee, members felt that it would be important to ensure the pilot is delivered using a representative population to ensure meaningful insights, despite acknowledging that a pilot might not fully capture the long-term impacts of the Minimum Income Guarantee. They emphasised the need for pilot participants to have clarity and security around impacts on existing benefits, and ensuring that all learning from the pilot is captured and utilised towards an efficient and effective Minimum Income Guarantee.

Members were asked to return to the question of conditionality and sanctions, where positions continued to vary amongst panel members. While members unanimously agreed that sanctions in the current system are too punitive, leaving people destitute and reliant on food banks, views on conditionality in general were more nuanced. Some felt a trust-based system would be more effective, while others expressed concern that this could be open to abuse of the system.

The last consideration looked at individualised Minimum Income Guarantee payments, whereby the Minimum Income Guarantee would be assessed at a household level but paid to individuals to give each member of the household direct control over their finances. Members agreed with this in principle but raised questions about age criteria, support for individuals with reduced capacity, and the interaction of these payments with other services.

Panel members reflected on overarching themes from all panel meetings that had been identified by the Scottish Government. They agreed with the themes provided and added a new theme about the value of work beyond pay. They agreed on the importance of mental health and well-being, societal participation, fostering an inclusive, equitable society where no one is overlooked, and the need for a system that is both transparent and accountable with integrated support.

However, discussions around the theme of individual risk, which focused on motivation, accountability, and responsibility, revealed less consensus. Members expressed differing views on the degree to which recipients of a Minimum Income Guarantee should be expected to assume responsibilities in exchange for support.

Members reflected on how these themes could be developed into principles to guide decision-making on the Minimum Income Guarantee in future. The discussions in small groups were brought together by Involve after the panel meeting to generate eight draft principles that reflected the discussion in all of the small groups:

The Minimum Income Guarantee should be delivered with compassion and dignity, providing an assurance of a decent quality of life and fostering a caring society.

• The Minimum Income Guarantee should be delivered with transparency and accountability, enabling people to access the support they are entitled to.
• The Minimum Income Guarantee should be delivered with fairness to all, reducing inequalities and tackling poverty.
• The Minimum Income Guarantee should be delivered so that it is inclusive and accessible to all.
• The Minimum Income Guarantee should be delivered to support financial, physical and mental well-being.
• The Minimum Income Guarantee should be delivered with support for fair work and value unpaid work.
• The Minimum Income Guarantee should be delivered with continuous monitoring, evaluation and learning.
• The Minimum Income Guarantee should be delivered as part of a holistic system which considers a wide range of needs and the most appropriate support to meet them.

Because these initial draft principles were generated outside of the panel meeting due to time limitations, these were put back to members by a survey to ensure that they accurately reflect the final principles that members would work on during panel meeting nine. This process undertaken in Panel meeting 9 is explained in the below chapter.

Expert by Experience Panel principles: a guide for decision-making on the Minimum Income Guarantee

The first seven meetings of the Minimum Income Guarantee Expert by Experience Panel focused on a different topic each, with meeting-based outputs as summarised in above. However, across these different meeting outputs, eight overarching themes were identified by the Scottish Government. These overarching themes were presented to Expert by Experience Panel members in panel meeting eight where members refined these into principles to guide the design of a Minimum Income Guarantee based on the work of the Expert by Experience Panel.

After panel meeting eight, Involve collated the work on principles, and drew this together to form eight draft principles that reflect the conversations across the small groups. Because this interpretation exercise was undertaken by Involve, these draft principles were shared with Panel members in a survey where they had the opportunity to consider whether anything is missing, reject suggested principles they disagreed with (which would be rejected if a majority of members felt they should be) and make amendments to them.

No additional principles were proposed by members and none of the principles were rejected. One member disagreed with the majority of principles and several members made amendment comments. Involve put this information into a document that members were able to refer to when finalising principles.

During the survey, members were also able to indicate which principles they would prefer to work on finalising panel meeting nine, and indicate whether there were any principles they were not comfortable working on. Groups for panel meeting nine were formed on the basis of these responses.

In panel meeting nine, members worked in five small groups, this enabled a slightly smaller group size for the development of principles. Each principle in draft had been added to a template. In small groups members developed the principles, reviewed and made comments on principles developed by other groups, and then finalised the principles that they began with.

Members were given guidance on creating a good principle. They were reminded that the purpose of these principles is to provide current and future decision-makers with clarity on the direction that the Expert by Experience Panel feel is needed for the successful design and implementations of a Minimum Income Guarantee. Members were asked to build guiding principles which could apply to future design decisions that are currently unknown. For each principle members were asked to include why it is important to the panel, and what considerations exist to strengthen the principle. Members were reminded that a good principle is:

• Clear and unambiguous.
• Sets a direction and does not include questions.
• Summarises what is important about the principle and its implementation.

Each principle is presented here as it was developed by members in meeting nine, along with the rationale, considerations, and any information the Panel felt was important for communicating the principle clearly to the general public. The only amendments to the principles as developed by members have been to make minor typographic corrections, and to delete resolved notes.

After panel nine, members voted on the extent to which they supported each principle in an individually completed survey. They demonstrated their support on a five-point Likert scale from strongly support to strongly oppose. The levels of support are presented beneath each principle. Please note that percentage figures are rounded and therefore do not always equal 100%.

If members did not support a principle they were given the opportunity to explain what would be needed for them to support it. However, the comments made in response to this predominantly came from one participant who does not agree with the idea of a Minimum Income Guarantee. Their responses were not considerations that would enable them to support the principle because they do not support the Minimum Income Guarantee. For this reason, their comments are not included below because they do not relate to each principle. However, it is important that we do recognise that this member does not agree with the Minimum Income Guarantee (in particular, the social security element) and that their comments reflected two main reasons for this; they feel it will cost the nation money, and they feel social security payments discourage aspiration.

The principles are presented here in the words of panel members. Where there is potential ambiguity around statements, we have provided footnotes to give additional information. The footnotes are based on understanding developed throughout the delivery of the entire panel but particularly wider discussions that took place during development of the principles.