Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to his Department’s press release entitled Government launches consultation on making public services quicker, easier and more secure to access with digital ID, published on 10 March 2026, what proportion of the People’s Panel will be from Essex.

As per my response to PQ 120739, participants will be recruited through a process called sortition. This is a random postcode lottery. It is a way of selecting individuals to take part in deliberative processes, where everyone is given an equal chance to be invited. No individual can buy their way in or simply turn up at the event.

Our partners at the Sortition Foundation manage this process. Sortition Foundation will mail out to thousands of households, at random, to invite members of the public to take part. Once volunteers have been received, a set of criteria is used to determine a broadly representative sample.