Transport minister Louise Haigh quits after fraud offence revealed

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Haigh said she was "sorry" to leave the Cabinet "under these circumstances"



Louise Haigh has resigned as transport secretary after it emerged she pleaded guilty to a fraud offence a decade ago.

She has admitted telling police in 2013 she had lost her work mobile phone in a mugging, but later found it had not been taken.

She was given a conditional discharge by magistrates, following the incident which happened before she became an MP.

Haigh's is the first resignation from Sir Keir Starmer's government and the 37-year-old said her appointment as the “youngest ever” female cabinet minister “remains one of the proudest achievements of my life”.

However, it raises questions over the prime minister's judgement in appointing someone with a spent conviction to his cabinet, having previously attacked the Conservatives during Partygate, saying "lawbreakers can't be lawmakers".

At the time of the offence, Haigh was working as a public policy manager for insurance company Aviva.

Following reports by Sky and The Times on Thursday, Haigh issued a statement, saying she reported a "terrifying" mugging in London to police.

She said she reported the phone as one of a number of items she believed had been stolen, and was issued with a new work phone.

Some time later, she added, she had discovered the handset was still in her house and she switched it on, which "triggered police attention" leading to her being called in for questioning.

"My solicitor advised me not to comment during that interview and I regret following that advice," she said. The matter was sent to magistrates.

Haigh said she pleaded guilty to making a false report to police at a magistrates' court, six months before becoming an MP in the 2015 general election, and received a discharge - the "lowest possible outcome".

She added: "Under the advice of my solicitor I pleaded guilty – despite the fact this was a genuine mistake from which I did not make any gain."

But The Times claims this row relates to more than one mobile phone being stolen or going missing.

Haigh’s team have not denied this but have not been drawn on it either.

On Friday Haigh sent a resignation letter to Sir Keir Starmer, saying she did not want to become a distraction and Labour would be "best served by my supporting you from outside government”.

In response, Sir Keir said Haigh had made “huge strides” as transport secretary to take the rail system back into public ownership, and thanked her for her work.

Whitehall sources told the BBC the transport secretary declared her discharge on appointment to the shadow cabinet in 2020, when the Labour Party was in opposition.

Some are questioning why Sir Keir gave her the job when it appears he had been informed of the specifics of this case when Haigh joined his shadow cabinet.

Haigh was responsible for one of the government's flagship policies, the re-nationalisation of the country's rail network under Great British Rail.

However, she was also the first cabinet minister the PM publicly rebuked, over remarks about P&O Ferries last month.

Haigh described P&O Ferries as a "rogue operator" and urged people to boycott the company, sparking a row with the ferry company's parent operation DP World.

When it threatened to boycott a major investment summit in response, Sir Keir said Haigh's comments were "not the view of the government".

One senior Labour figure described it as a “good resignation,” which may allow her to come back at a later date with a clean slate.

While Haigh spoke in her resignation letter of “our political project,” she and the prime minister were not always on the same page politically.

She was seen as one of the few left-wing ministers in his cabinet, who backed Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership.

A new transport secretary is likely to be announced today.

Born in 1987 in Sheffield, Haigh 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.

She has been the MP for Sheffield Heeley since 2015, and held a number of shadow ministerial and shadow cabinet roles before becoming transport secretary when Labour won the election nearly five months ago.

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Haigh’s resignation shows Starmer is always in the dark when it suits him



Coincidental as it may be, a pattern has emerged when it comes to what Sir Keir Starmer does and doesn’t know about the organisations he is heading.

As director of public prosecutions, he always seemed to be kept in the dark whenever his senior staff were handling a particularly hot potato.

Sir Keir was never told about investigations into Jimmy Savile or Mohamed Fayed, for example. New evidence that came to light about Andrew Malkinson, wrongly convicted of rape, “never crossed his desk”, we are told.

He was “not aware” that the Crown Prosecution Service was wrongly prosecuting postmasters under his watch.

Now it turns out that his knack for being ignorant of important information has followed him into politics.

When Louise Haigh was appointed by him as Transport Secretary, she did not disclose the full truth about her previous criminal conviction, Downing Street sources have said.

Once again, Sir Keir is telling us that he can’t be blamed for what happens within an organisation he heads – in this case, the Government – because he wasn’t provided with crucial information.

It begs the question, though, of whether he is at the very least guilty of being incurious. With his deep knowledge of the law, would it not have been pertinent to ask a series of questions of Ms Haigh when she told him about her conviction?

If she had made a “genuine mistake” when she told police that her work phone had been stolen during a mugging, why – if her account of the incident is true – did she decide to follow her solicitor’s advice not to comment during a police interview? And why did she plead guilty to a criminal offence?

Multiple sources have now claimed that Ms Haigh was accused of at least one other work-related matter when she was at Aviva from 2012 until 2015. Did Sir Keir ask her if the fraud conviction was an isolated incident before he put her in charge of a £30 billion government department?

He might feel he has been let down by the people around him failing to give him the information he needs, or he may argue that he cannot know what everyone in a large organisation such as the CPS or the Government is up to.

But there is a second element to the pattern of his career – Sir Keir as the hero of the hour whenever there is a triumph to be claimed.

According to his official biography on the Labour Party website, he is the man who oversaw the first ever UK prosecution of al-Qaeda terrorists, secured the successful retrial of terrorists involved in a suicide bombing plot, prosecuted MPs for fiddling their expenses, and brought the killers of Stephen Lawrence to justice.

Lest there be any doubt about his ability to get involved in case work or remember things that happened years ago, Sir Keir said this week that, when it came to assisted dying, he “looked at every single case for five years that was ever investigated”.

As Oscar Wilde might have said, to be unaware of one scandal brewing under one’s nose might be regarded as misfortune, but to be unaware of several starts to look like carelessness.

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Heidi Alexander appointed new transport secretary after Louise Haigh resigns



Heidi Alexander has been appointed the new transport secretary following the resignation of Louise Haigh on Friday morning.

Ms Haigh became the first minister to quit Sir Keir Starmer’s government after admitting she had been convicted for making a false report to police over a mobile phone being stolen 10 years ago.

On Friday, Downing Street declined to clarify whether the prime minister knew about Ms Haigh’s criminal conviction when he appointed her to the role and said new information had come to light that led to her resignation.

Ms Alexander, who has been the MP for Swindon South since July’s general election, has been handed the role after previously serving as a justice minister.

From 2010 to 2018, she was the MP for Lewisham East, during which time she served as the shadow health secretary under Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership.

Between 2018 and 2021, she worked as London mayor Sadiq Khan’s deputy transport mayor.

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Louise Haigh to receive thousands of pounds in severance pay



Louise Haigh will receive thousands of pounds in severance pay after her resignation as transport secretary, No 10 has confirmed.

Ms Haigh quit Sir Keir Starmer’s Cabinet last Thursday after she admitted pleading guilty to misleading the police a decade ago.

All departing ministers aged 65 or under are entitled to a quarter of their annual salary, no matter how long they are in their post or the circumstances in which they leave.

The only requirement to give back severance pay is if they are appointed to another ministerial role within three weeks.

A research briefing by the House of Commons Library states that a Cabinet minister whose ministerial salary is £67,505 would be entitled to severance pay of £16,876.

Michelle Donelan, the former Tory education secretary, was in line for a payment of the same size in 2022 despite resigning after only one full day in the role. She asked not to receive the cash and promised to give the entire amount to charity if she did.

Asked whether Ms Haigh would receive severance pay in the usual way, Sir Keir’s official spokesman said: “There are rules set out in legislation on severance pay, so I would just refer you to that rather than commenting on specific individuals. Severance pay rules are set out online, and that remains the case.”

Before the general election, Labour promised to reduce severance pay to a quarter of ministers’ actual earnings during their previous year as a minister.

Any minister who left their job while under investigation for misconduct allegations would also have had their severance pay suspended under the proposed reforms.

Asked whether Labour still planned to reform the severance pay system, the spokesman said: “I’d have to take that away. I can’t recall the specific pledge you’re referring to.”

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I can’t recall the specific pledge you’re referring to

They have broken so many, another one (if actually made) won't make any difference.

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PM refuses to give further details of Haigh resignation



Sir Keir Starmer has refused to give more information about why Louise Haigh resigned as transport secretary last week.

Haigh stepped down after it emerged she had pleaded guilty to a fraud offence a decade ago, a conviction she reportedly told Sir Keir about in 2020, when he appointed her to his shadow cabinet.

During Prime Minister's Questions, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch asked why the prime minister had appointed a "convicted fraudster" as his transport secretary.

Sir Keir said Haigh had been right to resign "when new information came to light".

But, when asked by Badenoch for details about the new information, he replied: "I'm not going to disclose private information."

Badenoch said the prime minister was "obfuscating" and that he owed MPs "an explanation".

"The country needs conviction politicians not politicians with convictions," she said.

On Friday, a Downing Street spokesperson refused to say what Sir Keir knew about the conviction, only that he accepted her resignation after "further information" emerged.

The spokesperson was questioned for 25 minutes on the issue but refused to give more details.

A regular briefing with journalists after Wednesday’s Prime Minister Questions was no different, with a Labour spokesperson present simply saying they would not get into “private discussions with former cabinet ministers”.

However the BBC understands that some in Downing Street were unhappy Haigh had not run her explanation past them before releasing it to the media on Thursday and felt she should have told senior civil servants about the conviction on becoming a minister.

On Wednesday, Badenoch's spokesperson said: “It's not good enough to say this is a private matter.”

"Did he know about the criminal conviction and put her in the Cabinet anyway? Or did he not and that is why he fired her on Friday?

"He has not come clear with the public. This is a serious matter.”

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I don't know why it's called PMQs, he never answers a question and only ever bleats on about a £22bn black hole and the past 14 years.