The Rhetoric of Lived Experience in the Scottish Government’s Policymaking

The relationship between evidence and policy is never straightforward. Notwithstanding, we should reasonably expect that policy formulation should draw on well-established bodies of knowledge from a range of sources, suitably analysed. In recent years, the Scottish Government appears to have given up on what was previously axiomatic by elevating knowledge from one source, that of ‘lived experience’, above all others. This has occurred with insufficient academic, professional, or political critique. At one level, this lack of critique is understandable in that questioning someone’s personal experience is difficult, precisely because it is personal. This article traces the turn to lived experience as the predominant political driver for social welfare policy in Scotland. It proceeds to examine the troubled National Care Service proposals to illustrate the extent and the consequences of the Scottish Government’s preoccupation with lived experience. It will conclude that there is a place for lived experience in policy debates, but that the conceptual flimsiness of the term renders it an inadequate basis for policy formulation or implementation and leaves it open to political misappropriation.