Minimum Income Guarantee: Experts by Experience Panel report

Next steps

The Expert Group continue to deliberate on the design of a Minimum Income Guarantee and have begun identifying steps towards this goal. The principles and this report will be shared with Expert Group, and the findings and principles will be used as a guide to decision making. Their final report will be published later this year.

Appendix 1: Panel demographic profile

The Minimum Income Guarantee Expert Group is committed to ensuring the voices and experiences of financial insecurity are at the centre of the design of a Minimum Income Guarantee. Expert by Experience panel members were recruited in partnership with The Sortition Foundation.

The Sortition Foundation was responsible for the initial recruitment of panel members for the Minimum Income Guarantee panel. Using the Sortition Foundation database of previous respondents to recruitment processes by civic lottery, invitations to participate were sent. People were asked to respond if they identified with having experiences either past or present of financial insecurity. From the responses panel members were selected to ensure the panel broadly represented the Scottish adult population with respect to gender, age, ethnicity and urban/rural geographical location.

Following selection of participants, the Sortition Foundation carried out telephone interviews with all who were selected to ask further questions about their experiences of financial insecurity and household make up to ensure that the range of experiences across the panel would be diverse enough. At this stage, if there was a lack of diversity, the selected panel members would be re-reviewed. However this was not necessary as the range of experience was diverse enough in the selected group.

To gain a better understanding of the backgrounds and experiences of the panel members, Involve have compiled this appendix drawing on three data sources.

Firstly, the demographic data provided by the Sortition Foundation upon recruitment of original members and those who joined at the top up recruitment in Summer 2023.

Secondly, the interviews that the Sortition Foundation conducted with members to understand their experiences of financial insecurity and whether they come from households at higher risk of poverty. This was not carried out at the top up so is only in respect of the original members.

Thirdly, Involve invited members to complete a follow-up survey in February 2023 at the halfway point in the panel when 3 of 6 panel sessions were complete. This survey asked members about a range of experiences, including whether they are disabled, a carer, their current experience of financial insecurity and political views. A total of 26 members (of 29 who were members of the panel at the time) completed the survey.