Transport secretary Louise Haigh quits after fraud offence revealed

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

Downing Street has named justice minister Heidi Alexander as her replacement.

Haigh 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”.

The new transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, returned to the Commons for a second stint as an MP in July this year after standing down in 2018.

She spent more than three years as London’s deputy mayor for transport under Sadiq Khan and was also deputy head of Transport for London.

News of Haigh’s conviction emerged on Thursday evening, in reports by the Times and Sky News.

Haigh issued a statement giving her version of the 2013 incident, which happened when she was working as a public policy manager for insurance company Aviva.

She said she had reported a “terrifying” mugging in London to police. She said she had told police the phone was 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.

The BBC understands Haigh was unaware of any investigation by her former employer, Aviva, involving more than one mobile phone, as reported by the newspaper.

Aviva is not commenting on the story.

On Friday, Haigh sent a resignation letter to Sir Keir, 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 spent conviction to Sir Keir when he appointed her to his shadow cabinet in 2020, when the Labour Party was in opposition.

She did not tell the government’s Propriety and Ethics team about it when she became a member of the cabinet after Labour won July’s general election.

She believed it was sufficient to have disclosed her spent conviction to Sir Keir when Labour was in opposition, the BBC has been told.

Spent convictions remain on an individual’s criminal record for life, but they do not have to reveal them in job applications, under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.

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”.

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.”

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.