An adviser hired by Nicola Sturgeon watered down a report on education at the request of government officials, despite claims that she is independent.
Naomi Eisenstadt, an expert hired to advise SNP ministers on poverty, agreed to make changes to a draft in which she said investment in colleges had not kept pace with spending on universities, for which the government funds free tuition.
Officials asked for the wording to be changed before publication and said the situation was “not as stark” as Ms Eisenstadt initially suggested. They pointed out increases to colleges’ budget this year but did not mention large cuts inflicted in previous years.
Although the budget did rise this year, figures from Audit Scotland indicated a cut of 12 per cent, or £69 million, between 2012 and last year in real terms. In the final version, the report instead stated that universities had experienced “greater protection from hard financial times” than colleges.
In another report for the government, Ms Eisenstadt again changed her findings. She had originally called for an end to the SNP’s flagship council tax freeze and raised concerns over the impact of cuts to councils in draft versions but the criticism, which would have been highly embarrassing for the SNP before last year’s Holyrood elections, was omitted or made less explicit in the final version. Draft versions of both reports were released under freedom of information requests.
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Iain Gray, education spokesman for Scottish Labour, cited the SNP’s correspondence with Audit Scotland last month over the fall in the number of college places as another example of government meddling in independent reports. He added: “This SNP government cannot help itself when it comes to rewriting independent reports. Having attempted to whitewash Naomi Eisentadt’s first report we now see that civil servants challenged the language around cuts to further education.
“The SNP government is clearly ashamed of its record on colleges. Only weeks ago Nicola Sturgeon attacked Audit Scotland, our independent financial watchdog, for daring to highlight cuts to colleges and now we know that Naomi Eisenstadt came under pressure to change language in her report over cuts.”
A spokeswoman for the Scottish government said it had provided strong financial support to colleges and that it was standard practice for officials to check reports before publication. She added: “The information released reflects Naomi Eisenstadt’s request to Scottish government officials to check the accuracy of her draft report.”