Scotland's top civil servant has become embroiled in a row over political bias after saying the SNP was elected because of public discontent at a widening poverty gap and other problems under Labour.

Sir John Elvidge, the Scottish Government’s permanent secretary, said the creation of Holyrood highlighted the poor state of health, education, and poverty north of the border under two Labour-led coalitions.

Sir John’s comments, made in a professional journal, have been criticised for appearing to breach the protocol which requires civil servants to avoid becoming involved in party political issues.

Writing in the journal of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, he says that, although there is no consensus on why Labour was defeated by the SNP last May, he believes the advent of devolution in 1999 played a major part.

“It may have encouraged a focus on the intractability of long-standing problems — that around one in five of our young people leaves school without the basic level of educational attainment necessary for positive life chances, that the variation in average age of death between the affluent and poor was widening and that the geographical concentration in the poorest members of our society in certain areas had been largely unchallenged for three or four decades, bringing with it the increasing entrenchment of inter-generational poverty.

“These problems are by no means unique to Scotland; but the level of expectation that government would resolve them may be particularly strong in Scotland in the devolution era.”

He says that since the election, the civil service in Scotland has been transformed, with blinkered departments replaced by a series of flexible managerial units which cooperate far better on delivering change.

After the Nationalists came to power, Elvidge, who earns £150,000 a year, was attacked by MSPs for being too close to his new masters. Last July, he said that, despite being part of the UK Civil Service, he felt he worked for a “separate government”.

He also defended Salmond’s controversial £45,000 “national conversation” on independence, and in October he cleared the first minister of misusing civil service resources for political advantage after he unveiled new economic figures at the SNP conference.

Lord George Foulkes, the Labour MSP for Lothians, said that Sir John and the first minister shared a love of centralising government.

“I think he and Salmond are working hand in glove, and there needs to be more separation of powers,” he said. “Of course, the civil service have to implement what ministers ask, but they also have to maintain a proper sense of detachment.”

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