New report evidences the impact ‘siloed’ policy decision-making has on people living in poverty
Published: 6 November 2026
New research from the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Public Policy has examined how decisions made at different levels of government impact people living in poverty.
New research from the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Public Policy has examined how decisions made at different levels of government impact people living in poverty.
The report, entitled Rewiring the State of Poverty, argues that Scotland’s public service reform agenda is a critical opportunity to rewire the state so that systems serve people in poverty. It offers practical steps to foster better collaboration across different parts of the system – Scottish, UK and local government, parliament, and civil society – to drive the change necessary to lift people out of poverty.
Rather than measure poverty levels in Scotland, the project looked at how the state responds to the challenge of poverty in Scotland and how poverty is governed between and within different levels of government.
For example, it examined how local government policy interacts with Scottish Government policy and what happens when UK Government policy decisions meet Scottish Government priorities.
In the report, authors Professor Nicola McEwen, Professor Kezia Dugdale, Dr Claire MacRae, Honorary Professor Fiona Duncan, and Dr Thomas Rochow, set out key steps for ‘rewiring’ the state, to improve how governments can make decisions and develop policies with people at the centre.
Professor Kezia Dugdale, Co-Director of the Centre for Public Policy, said: “As Scotland grapples with urgent need to reform public services, the essential question decision makers need to answer is 'how will these proposed changes improve the lives of people living in poverty?'.
"This report provides the evidence base for the state of poverty in Scotland today and makes a number of proposals for the Scottish Parliament, Scottish Government and Local Government to consider including new Parliamentary committees with investigative scrutiny functions and a much stronger core at the centre of government."
While the focus of the research - which was funded by The Robertson Trust - was on poverty, the improvements in the report would support governments to better tackle any of the significant policy challenges society faces.
The State of Poverty research put people at the heart of it and used an innovative approach to incorporating lived experience through composite stories. These short narratives were developed in collaboration with lived experience panels and the Poverty Alliance to represent the real experience of navigating state systems in Scotland.
The composite stories approach could be used in policy making and research to include lived experience in decision-making without relying on people to continually retell and relive their experiences.
First published: 6 November 2026