Naomi Eisenstadt is halfway through a typically quickfire survey of the Scottish government’s housing record – “ditching the bedroom tax, bringing in private-rented-sector controls, the commitment to building social housing, some of it accessible, and stopping selling council housing … that’s brilliant!” – when she pauses for breath and clarifies her enthusiasm.
“It’s very difficult, if you live in England and you’re moderately leftwing, to complain about anything the Scottish government does,” she says, sounding almost exasperated. “I’m sorry, but the comparison with England is so grim!”
That she even feels the need to apologise for her enthusiasm is telling in itself. Recently appointed for another year as the Scottish government’s independent adviser on poverty and inequality, the 66-year-old who has been at the forefront of some of the most successful and influential social policies of the past few decades is well aware of the balancing act demanded of her position.
But Eisenstadt, the first director of the Labour government’s Sure Start Unit, also former director of the Social Exclusion Task Force, is a cheerful pragmatist. The key lesson she brings with her from those previous roles is: “Basically, work with the grain of what they’re trying to do and help them do it, if you believe what they’re trying to do is right.”
Her influence was most immediately seen at last autumn’s SNP conference, when Nicola Sturgeon refocused the party’s childcare policy on to improving the number of qualified nursery staff in poor areas after Eisenstadt made clear her concerns that Sturgeon’s government had been upping the ante on childcare hours without addressing the question of quality. (Managing the tension between flexibility, quality and affordability remains “almost impossible”, she warns now.)
The reasons for the difference between Scotland and the rest of the UK on welfare and poverty reduction may be self-evident at government level but, says Eisenstadt, “it’s very difficult to figure out why it’s so different, and of course it has become more divergent since the 2015 [Westminster] election and is more extreme now.”
“On the child poverty story, it goes back to Iain Duncan Smith, who I think was serious, and did really care, but he encouraged a narrative that is about the behaviours rather than economic circumstance. So when he talks about wanting to work on the root causes of poverty, it seems to me the root cause is not having enough money. As soon as you take that away from the definition of poverty it becomes much more about government trying to change the behaviours of adults. So the measurement is: Do you have a job? Are you married? So it’s all about individual behaviour, not about a systemic approach to the economics of poverty.”
According to Eisenstadt, that divergence has reached its zenith (for now) with the redrafting of child poverty legislation for the UK, followed by the Scottish government this summer announcing plans to bring forward Scotland’s first-ever child poverty bill, in a move that could allow the reintroduction of those abandoned statutory targets.
With Holyrood’s new parliamentary session having started this week, there’s an expectation of even further divergence. Sturgeon on Tuesday described the child poverty bill as “arguably the most important piece of legislation” that her government will bring forward this year. But the Scottish government will also begin the process of shaping the country’s first social security system, using devolved welfare powers agreed under the Scotland Act.
In Eisenstadt’s first report, published earlier in the year, she urged the Scottish government to “proceed with caution” on the new welfare powers: what did she mean?
“There is a fundamental tension to be managed between a transparent, simple system and what families lives are like. People argue for universal because it’s simple and cheap. People argue for targeted, but then you need to figure out how.”
The new welfare powers will account for around £2.7bn or 15% of the total Scottish benefits bill, with the rest still controlled by Westminster. The SNP government has already committed in its manifesto to increasing carer’s allowance to the level of jobseeker’s allowance, and replacing the Sure Start maternity grant with an expanded maternity and early years allowance called the Best Start grant.
Eisenstadt gives this an immediate thumbs up: “There’s nothing better if you’re worried about poverty than giving people money. We know that these are pinch times in people’s lives and a dollop of cash makes a difference.”
Likewise, she says that she regrets not emphasising in her first report that Scotland will not gain any powers over sanctions: “I kept hearing horrendous stories about sanctions and we’re not getting any powers [on them].”
As her work gathers pace for another parliamentary year, two areas demand her attention: “There are two things that really jump out. One is the Glasgow health stuff, which of course has been talked about for years and years. The other one is rural poverty.”
“I was up in Shetland for their Fairness Commission and in Lerwick they blame everything on Edinburgh, not Westminster. There is a real issue because the numbers are small, because it’s sparse populations, but the cost of living is much higher. It’s difficult to know how you manage that. Repopulation would help because you do need a critical mass, for example, for a good health service.”
On the day that we meet, Sturgeon is making further gloomy pronouncements about the economic consequences of Brexit for Scotland. There is great willingness to be ambitious about poverty, says Eisenstadt, but the money simply isn’t there.
“It really is robbing Peter to pay Paul and it’s how you do it in the fairest way. Brexit was a shock, no question.”
Meanwhile, she acknowledges that the currently toxic relationship between local and central government – not helped by the lengthy council-tax freeze and further spending cuts – could be improved. “There’s so much more that we agree on than disagree on, particularly between Labour-run authorities and the SNP, but the nature of the relationships are difficult and we need to rise above that.”
