Criticised more in the past for impenetrable management memos than he was praised for big ideas, the former BBC Director General will have to work hard.
There will be some who will take convincing that he is not just the latest in the line of "Tony's cronies" to have been promoted by the prime minister.
His detractors have been delighted to discover that his only experience of crime was the theft of a mahogany toilet seat from his washroom at the BBC, when he was entertaining none other than the then Home Secretary, Michael Howard.
The government insists that the fact he is "unencumbered" by experience of crime makes him ideal for the job.
"I think the idea of getting Lord Birt in is to get a fresh perspective on this and see if there are any insights he can give us," said a spokesman.
Thatcherite or Blairite?
At 56, Lord Birt sits as a crossbencher in the House of Lords, but is known to be a long-standing supporter and one-time member of Labour, as well as a close personal friend of Tony Blair.
Ironically, he was regarded as an arch Thatcherite when he was appointed as Director General of the BBC in 1990 after a spell as deputy.
His tenure at the BBC was not an altogether happy one.
Although credited by many for making the changes necessary to equip the corporation for the digital age, his decision to create an internal market was widely condemned, and colleagues queued up to attack his management style.
'Croak-voiced dalek'
Chief among his critics was former friend and colleague Michael Grade, who left the BBC in 1990 after a row, later calling his management methods "pseudo-Leninist".
Dennis Potter had worse to say, branding him a "croak-voiced dalek" in a 1993 lecture.
Lord Birt also had to fight off criticism in 1993 when it emerged that he was being paid as a company and employing his wife as its secretary, rather than being a salaried employee of the corporation.
However, some commentators have praised the way he handled the BBC's often fraught relations with government and parliament, and steered the corporation away from the assaults made on it by Mrs Thatcher's government - skills which may have played a part in his new appointment.
But this closeness to government also attracted criticism in January when he decided to retire earlier than planned from the BBC, after becoming the first Director General since Lord Reith to receive a peerage.
'Humble beginnings'
All this is a far cry from his humble beginnings in Liverpool in 1944 - a contemporary of the Beatles.
With less of a working class background than he may like to profess, his father was an executive in a tyre company, he was well educated, and ended up reading engineering at Oxford.
From there he went to Granada television, then to Weekend World, where a raft of politicians and journalists cut their teeth, including Peter Mandelson and Peter Jay.
'Portfolio life'
His new day-a-week appointment certainly seems to fit Lord Birt's post-BBC career plans.
Adopting his often notorious executive jargon, he has expressed in the past his hope to spend his retirement writing his autobiography and leading a "portfolio life".
This meant taking on "a number of modest responsibilities in the public and private sector, a mixture of interest and reward," he told the Sunday Times last year.
But with the government reeling over the "cashpoint fine" for louts fiasco, the arrest of a drunk and incapable Euan Blair, and the imminent release of crime figures showing an upsurge, Lord Birt may find he has got his work cut out.
"Modest" may not quite describe the task in hand.