I thought that Standard Life would take direct business if someone contacts them directly. Your experience suggests otherwise.
A bare trust is a trust that is established to hold the assets of a policy in trust for another person in a particular way. As it's a legal entity and irreversible, you'd want to be sure you know exactly what you're doing before setting one up. You also need to register the trust with Revenue and maintain an internal beneficial owner register, which must match what you return to Revenue.
The policy itself can be set up on an Execution Only basis if you know exactly what type of policy you want - usually regular savings plan or lump sum investment bond - and what funds you want the money to be invested in.
However, I'd suggest that setting up an investment and simultaneously establishing a trust is something that you should get advice on unless you're really sure of what you're doing.