A SERIES of challenging recommendations from Nicola Sturgeon's poverty tsar will be implemented if Scottish Labour wins the Holyrood election, Kezia Dugdale has announced.
The Scottish Government has postponed its response to a report by poverty expert Naomi Eisenstadt until after the May 5 poll, despite promising to outline what action it would take by the end of last month.
But in a move that will put pressure on the Nationalists, Ms Dugdale said she would implement its 15 recommendations in full.
She said a Scottish Labour government would use an Anti-Poverty Bill to take forward the measures.
Among them is the so-called socio-economic duty, which would place an obligation on ministers and public bodies to assess the impact of all new policies on reducing the gap between rich and poor.
The duty was brought in by the last Labour government at Westminster as part of the 2010 Equality Act but scrapped by the Tories.
Ms Eisenstadt also called for a "bold" reform of local tax to make it fairer.
Scottish Labour insists its proposals for a property tax based on proportion of a home's value meets the recommendation.
Ms Dugdale said: "The SNP government ordered a review into what can be done to tackle poverty in Scotland.
"It was a very good report, carried out by the very respected Naomi Eisenstadt.
"That’s the report that Nicola Sturgeon ordered and then hoped everybody would forget about."
Ms Eisenstadt was appointed last summer with a remit to challenge the Scottish Government over its approach to tackling poverty.
She delivered her report in January.
It was welcomed by Ms Sturgeon, who promised a detailed response by the end of the last month.
The government was accused of kicking the report into the long grass after it failed to set out its plans but earlier this social justice secretary Alex Neil said the SNP would respond after the election if it returns to power.
Among the other recommendations, Ms Eisenstadt called on the government to target fuel poverty programmes at people on low incomes.
She also said childcare policies should focus on "quality" to improve children's education.
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