A LEADING public intellectual who was unveiled as a member of the Scottish Government’s economic advisory group has not attended a meeting of the body in over five years.

Professor Joseph Stiglitz, who has been dubbed a “rockstar” economist, has not been present at any of the group’s meetings or been part of official teleconference calls since 2012.

However, a Scottish Government spokesperson said the professor had spoken to the Government’s chief economist on wellbeing and twice met First Minister Nicola Sturgeon last year.

Stiglitz, a celebrated American economist and professor at Columbia University, used to hold a senior position at the World Bank and served as chair of President Clinton’s council of economic advisers.

He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001 and is known as a critic of free-market economics.

A 2015 article in the conservative Standpoint magazine noted: “He has become something of an economic rockstar in recent years, with a cult-like following from fans won over by his characterisation of inequality as the dangerous result of the 'unjust policies and misguided priorities' of a vindictive 'one per cent'.”

In 2011, the then First Minister Alex Salmond welcomed Stiglitz as a high-profile signing for his own council of economic advisers, a brains trust set up four years earlier.

However, the US-based economist’s attendance record at officials meetings has been patchy. According to the Scottish Government website, Stiglitz was at one meeting in 2012 and took part in conference calls on two other occasions in the same year.

Since then, Stiglitz has missed 15 official meetings and teleconference calls on the trot, with reasons for his absence including diary commitments, conflicting engagements and the weather.

Despite not being able to attend gatherings of the advisory group, Professor Stiglitz has maintained an interest in Scottish politics and the constitution.

In 2014, he said of the hostility of the pro-union parties to the SNP Government currency union plan: "For the most part these are bluffs. People are going to be looking at what is in the best interests of the each of the two parties and there will be a negotiation.”

Two years later, he told the BBC the currency plan may have been an error:

"The reason they wanted to link the economy to the pound was that they wanted the smoothest transition possible, they wanted to say we can move from the current economic arrangement while keeping our currency and keeping other institutions.

"I think in hindsight that may have been a mistake. It would be a mistake to join the euro by the way, so what they would have needed to do is perhaps to resurrect the Scottish pound, and let it float."

Scottish Tory MSP Murdo Fraser said: “This fiasco sums up the SNP perfectly. Happy to spin the appointment of a ‘rock star’ economist at the time, but several years on he’s had little input. It’s no wonder the nationalists have such a laughable record on economic matters.”

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Professor Stiglitz is a valued member of the First Minister’s Council of Economic Advisers and met with the First Minister twice during 2017 in April and October. This month the chief economist and Professor Stiglitz discussed the update to the Scottish Government’s National Performance Framework and the Scottish Government’s work with other countries around proposals to develop a Group of Wellbeing Governments.”

According to STV, the April meeting between Sturgeon and Stiglitz was not minuted.

Stiglitz could not be reached.