Scottish Household Survey 2023: trust in public institutions

Trust in public institutions, 2023

Trust – all adults

The survey asked to what extent people trusted seven public institutions: the Scottish Government, Local Government, the Civil Service, the Education System, the Health System, the Police and the Justice System (which includes courts, lawyers and prisons). The response options were: trust it a great deal; tend to trust it; tend to distrust it; distrust it greatly; don’t know or not sure. Throughout this publication, ‘trust it a great deal’ and ‘tend to trust it’ have been combined in the description of findings, as have ‘tend to distrust it’ and ‘distrust it greatly’.

As set out in Table 1 (below), the institutions that adults in Scotland were most likely to express trust in were the Health System (78%) and the Police (73%). Compared to 2022 findings, this represents a very slight decline in trust in the Health System (79% in 2022) and a slightly larger decline in trust in the Police (78% in 2022) (Tables 11.26, 11.42).

People were most likely to express distrust in the Scottish Government (45%) and Local Government (35%). Compared to 2022 figures, this represents a slight increase in distrust of Local Government (32% in 2022) and a larger increase in distrust in Scottish Government (38% in 2022) (Tables 11.2, 11.10).

The institutions people were least likely to express distrust in were the Education system (15%), the Police (16%), the Civil Service (17%) and the Health system (18%). (Tables 11.26, 11.42, 11.18, 11.34).

Care must be taken when making comparisons between institutions, because the percentage of adults who said they didn’t know or were not sure whether they trusted an institution varied considerably. For example, 27% of people said they didn’t know whether they trusted the Civil Service and 23% didn’t know whether they trusted the Justice or Education systems, compared with 4% for the Health System (Table 11.1).

Note to table: Responses of ‘Trust it a great deal’ or ‘tend to trust it’ have been amalgamated as ‘trust’ responses in these statistics. Responses of ‘Distrust it greatly’ or ‘Tend to distrust it’ have been amalgamated as ‘distrust’ responses in these statistics.

Trust by sex

Across all institutions, men and women expressed similar overall levels of trust.

Trust by age

Trust in institutions varied by age across some institutions more than others. Adults aged 16 to 34 were more likely than adults aged 35 to 59 and adults aged 60 or over to express trust in the Scottish Government (56% compared with 46% and 36% respectively) (Table 11.3). Adults aged 16 to 34 and adults aged 35 to 59 were more likely than adults aged 60 or over to express trust in Education (66% for both groups compared to 54%). Adults aged 16 to 34 were more likely than adults aged 60 or over to express trust in Local Government (56% compared to 50%) (Tables 11.27, 11.11).

There was less age variation in levels of trust in the Health System, the Justice System and the Civil Service. Adults aged 35 to 59 and adults aged 60 or over were slightly more likely to express trust in the police than adults aged 16 to 34 (74% for both groups compared to 70%) (Tables 11.35, 11.51, 11.19, 11.43).

Trust by disability

Disabled people were less likely than non-disabled people to express trust in public institutions.^[1] This difference was observed for all of the institutions in the survey (Tables 11.6, 11.14, 11.22, 11.30, 11.38, 11.46, 11.54). This was also the case in the 2022 findings.

Trust by ethnicity

The SHS uses the following categories for ethnicity:

• ‘White – Scottish’ and ‘White – Other British’.
• ‘White: Other’ which includes Irish, Gypsy/Traveller, Polish and other white ethnic groups.
• ‘Minority ethnic groups’ which includes mixed or multiple ethnic groups, Asian, African, Caribbean or Black, Arab or any other ethnic groups.

‘White: other’ and ‘Minority ethnic groups’ expressed higher levels of trust in Scottish Government than ‘White – Scottish’ and ‘White – Other British’ groups (61% and 65% respectively, compared to 44% and 38% respectively). This was also the case for trust expressed in Local Government (63% and 65% respectively, compared to 50% and 54% respectively) (Tables 11.5, 11.13).

‘White – Other British’ people expressed the highest levels of trust in the Police (76%) compared to ‘White – Scottish’ (72%) and ‘Minority Ethnic Groups’ (68%). A similar pattern could be seen for the Justice System: 61% of ‘White – Other British’ expressed trust in the Justice System compared to 49% of ‘Minority Ethnic Groups’ (Tables 11.45, 11.53).

Trust by urban-rural classification

Adults in large urban areas expressed higher levels of trust in the Scottish Government than adults in remote rural areas (49% compared to 38%).^[2] Adults in large urban areas expressed higher levels of trust in the Education System than adults in remote rural areas (63% compared to 56%) (Tables 11.9, 11.33).

Adults in remote rural areas expressed higher levels of trust in the Health System than adults in small accessible towns and small remote towns (82% compared to 75% for both groups) (Table 11.40).

Adults in small remote towns expressed higher levels of trust in Local Government than adults in small accessible towns (58% compared to 50%) (Table 11.17).

There was less variation in levels of trust expressed by adults in urban and rural areas for the Civil Service, the Police, and the Justice System (Tables 11.25, 11.49, 11.57).

Trust by area deprivation

Adults living in the 20% most deprived areas, as measured by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation^[3], expressed similar levels of trust in the Scottish Government compared with adults living in the 20% least deprived areas (46% compared to 45%) (Table 11.7). This was also the case for the Health System, with 79% of adults living in the 20% most deprived areas expressing trust in the Health System compared to 78% of adults living in the 20% least deprived areas (Tables 11.39).

Adults living in the 20% most deprived areas were less likely to express trust in the Justice System, the Civil Service, Local Government and the Police (Tables 11.55, 11.23, 11.15, 11.47). The largest differences in trust could be seen for the Justice System and the Civil Service. Half (49%) of adults living in the 20% most deprived areas expressed trust in the Justice System, compared to 62% of adults living in the 20% least deprived areas (a difference of 13 percentage points). Similarly, half (51%) of adults living in the 20% most deprived areas expressed trust in the Civil Service, compared to 61% of adults living in the 20% least deprived areas (a difference of 10 percentage points) (Tables 11.55, 11.23).

Just over three in five adults (62%) living in the 20% most deprived areas expressed trust the Education System, compared to 65% living in the least deprived areas. This difference was not statistically significant.