I recently created are couple of paper wallets on bitaddress.org.
Any reason why you're using bitaddress.org then importing into Electrum? You could effectively generate a paper wallet via using Electrum offline or Bitcoin Core. Obviously, verifying the download of them, and then generating the private key offline.
In my opinion, there's not much use in using bitaddress if you have access to Electrum or Bitcoin Core. There's just additional risks depending on how you generated it via bitaddress.
the function works perfectly when I import / checks private keys created via other wallet generators.
however, problems arise when I impot / check the details of the private keys generated by bitaddress.org itself, a different public address than the one I have been given is stated....
What other wallet generators are you using? They could be unsafe or compromised, which could effectively steal your private key, and output a completely different address. It's best to import it via Electrum/Bitcoin Core which has been verified. That way, you know you've got the correct software, and aren't trusting a unknown source.