UNITED KINGDOM
A new report has revealed that Public Servants have seen the biggest rise in public trust of any profession in the UK over the past 35 years.
The 2018 Veracity Index also showed that Labour Party voters put more faith in officials than Conservative Party supporters.
While trust in PS employees is high, the opposite is the case with the Ministers they serve, with the Index also showing the trust gap between the two groups is wider than it has been at any point since the ranking was launched in 1983.
A total of 62 per cent of survey respondents said they trusted PS employees to tell the truth — up from 59 per cent in 2017 and 56 per cent in 2016 — compared with 22 per cent who said the same of Government Ministers, and just 19 per cent who said they trusted politicians generally.
The survey asked 1,001 British adults to say whether or not they thought people in 24 professions told the truth.
Trust in trade union officials has risen by 27 points over the same period, and scientists received a 22-point jump since 1997.
More people who voted to remain in the European Union in the Brexit referendum said they trusted officials than people who voted for leaving — 67 per cent compared with 55 per cent.
Nursing is the most highly trusted profession in Britain, according to the survey, in which 96 per cent of respondents said they would believe nurses were telling the truth.
Doctors followed, at 92 per cent, with teachers, engineers and professors making up the top five.
PS employees were also outranked in the survey by judges, members of the armed forces and the police, but came ahead of pollsters, charity chief executives and bankers.
They also scored much more favourably than Ministers and other politicians, both of whom are in the bottom five, along with real estate agents, journalists and advertising executives.
London, 23 November 2018
