Transport Secretary Louise Haigh resigns after admitting misleading police
Louise Haigh has quit as Transport Secretary after admitting she has an old conviction relating to a false police report.
Ms Haigh said she was mugged in 2013 and gave officers a list of items that were stolen, including a work phone which she later found.
She said the matter was a ‘genuine mistake’ from which she ‘did not make any gain’, and that magistrates gave her the ‘lowest possible outcome’ when she pleaded guilty the following year.
It is understood the conviction – believed to be for fraud and now spent – was disclosed to Sir Keir Starmer when she joined the shadow cabinet.
The Conservatives said it ‘raises questions’ as to why Sir Keir appointed Ms Haigh to Cabinet, adding: ‘The onus is now on Keir Starmer to explain this obvious failure of judgement to the British public.’
Ms Haigh has been Sheffield Heeley MP since 2015 and held a number of shadow ministerial and shadow cabinet roles before becoming Transport Secretary when Labour won the election in July.
Before she entered politics she spent time as a special constable.
In her resignation letter to Sir Keir, she wrote: ‘I gave the police a list of my possessions that I believed had been stolen, including my work phone.
‘Some time later, I discovered that the handset in question was still in my house.
‘I should have immediately informed my employer and not doing so straight away was a mistake.
‘I appreciate that whatever the facts of the matter, this issue will inevitably be a distraction from delivering on the work of this government and the policies to which we are both committed.’
Louise Haigh’s rise from young Labour MP to Transport Secretary
Louise Haigh was once described as having ‘terrier-like intensity’ after she was first elected as an MP for Sheffield Heeley in May 2015.
Then-House of Commons speaker John Bercow praised her for her campaigning against the closure of tax offices and the following year she was deemed by the Yorkshire Post to be the most hard-working of the new intake of MPs because of the volume of her parliamentary questions and speeches.
Born in 1987 in Sheffield, she studied politics at Nottingham University and law at Birkbeck, University of London.
She worked as a shop steward for the union Unite and as a Metropolitan Police officer in London’s Lambeth borough before entering politics.
Ms Haigh has said she drew on her experience as a special constable when she was shadow policing minister from 2017.
The 37-year-old has called for changes to the culture of policing.
She nominated Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership contest in 2015 but then backed Owen Smith, and campaigned for Lisa Nandy rather than Sir Keir Starmer to be Labour leader in 2020.
But she still remained in high-level roles within the party.
Ms Haigh was made shadow secretary for Northern Ireland in 2020, at a time when tense post-Brexit trade negotiations were taking place, before taking up the shadow transport secretary post in 2021.
Ms Haigh was appointed Transport Secretary on July 5 2024 after Labour’s general election win, becoming the youngest female Cabinet minister to ever be appointed.
In October, Ms Haigh said that she had boycotted P&O Ferries and encouraged others to do so, after the firm sacked hundreds of workers in 2022 and replaced them with lower-paid agency staff.
The Prime Minister publicly criticised the comments, saying they were ‘not the view of the Government’.
During the election campaign, Ms Haigh pledged to bring train services on Britain’s railways into public ownership.
A day before her resignation, flagship Government plans to renationalise rail passenger services became law.
The Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill received royal assent and will enable the Government to take over services from private firms as their franchises expire or are broken.
Ms Haigh said it marked ‘a historic moment for our railways’.
Ms Haigh said she is ‘totally committed to our political project’ but believes ‘it will be best served by my supporting you from outside Government’.
‘I am sorry to leave under these circumstances, but I take pride in what we have done. I will continue to fight every day for the people of Sheffield Heeley who I was first and foremost elected to represent and to ensure that the rest of our programme is delivered in full,’ she wrote.
In a reply, Sir Keir thanked Ms Haigh for her work to deliver the Government’s transport agenda.
The PM said she had made ‘huge strides’ as Transport Secretary to take the rail system back into public ownership through the creation of Great British Railways and investing £1 billion into vital bus services.
‘I know you still have a huge contribution to make in the future,’ he added.
A Conservative Party spokesman said: ‘Louise Haigh has done the right thing in resigning. It is clear she has failed to behave to the standards expected of an MP.
‘In her resignation letter, she states that Keir Starmer was already aware of the fraud conviction, which raises questions as to why the Prime Minister appointed Ms Haigh to Cabinet with responsibility for a £30bn budget?
‘The onus is now on Keir Starmer to explain this obvious failure of judgement to the British public.’
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