SNP ditches public trust question from national survey

If you don’t want to know the answer, don’t ask the question. That seems to be the mantra by which the SNP is currently abiding. Careful analysis of the many, many years of the ferry fiasco to the recent confusion over former health secretary Michael Matheson’s iPad bill has shown that important queries haven’t always been voiced when they should have been. And now, the latest example of question avoidance relates to a rather sensitive matter for the Scottish government: public trust. 

It transpires that SNP ministers have quietly scrapped a question on this very issue from the Scottish Household Survey. The poll asks the public to rate their trust levels on everything from the civil service to local councils to the police. And, in every other year, the survey has also asked participants to rank their trust in the Scottish government. But not this year. This particular item has been ditched from the annual poll — and will be asked every 24 months instead.