Critical friend of governments emphasises progress not provocation

NAOMI Eisenstadt, a former social exclusion adviser to Tony Blair’s government, was appointed as the Scottish Government’s policy tsar in 2015.

The American’s child welfare policy expert’s role was almost immediately beset with controversy amid allegations that her report, Shifting the Curve, which was published last year, was being toned down at ministers’ request.

In particular, a call to end the council tax freeze and comments about it not being an effective anti-poverty measure were alleged to have been neutered. Critics said the report was set to be a whitewash. In the event, Ms Eisenstadt insisted her findings had not been diluted, and indeed the council tax freeze was abandoned a few weeks later.

The poverty tsar’s job – renewed after her initial stint prior to the Scottish elections – is to prick the Government’s conscience over policies which are insufficiently alert to the need to address social inequality. Her interventions, including scepticism about universal benefits, such as bus passes and fuel allowances, and a call for higher taxes for Scots earning £100,000 or more, have not always been welcomed by ministers.

Nevertheless, she has often been positive about the situation north of the Border. She once apologised to an interviewer, having waxed lyrical about Holyrood ditching the bedroom tax, and controlling the private rented housing sector. It was difficult to complain, she said, about the Scottish Government’s policies: “I’m sorry, but the comparison with England is so grim!”

Her approach has at times seemed almost as an apologist for Ms Sturgeon – whose failure to respond to the first report by March of last year was because ministers had just “run out of time”, Ms Eisenstad said.

Perhaps to the frustration of Ms Sturgeon’s political opponents, Ms Eisenstadt has tended not to be outspoken as an adviser.

She has styled herself as a collaborationist, not an antagonist to government. Even if ministers don’t take up all her ideas, she would prefer to work with them and make progress. The words of governments count for little.

She says: “It is what they do that matters.”