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UK transport secretary Louise Haigh was forced to resign after admitting she had pleaded guilty to a criminal offence over a missing mobile phone, in a fresh setback to the government after a bruising first five months in office.
Heidi Alexander, a justice minister and former deputy mayor for transport in London, was appointed on Friday as Haigh’s replacement.
Haigh said on Thursday that she pleaded guilty in 2014 to an offence relating to a work mobile phone she wrongly claimed had been stolen. The offence was fraud by false representation, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Both Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney told Haigh in phone calls that evening that her position was untenable and that she should step down from the cabinet, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Starmer accepted her resignation on Thursday night amid concerns in Downing Street that she had not given a full public explanation of the circumstances behind the conviction.
“This wasn’t going to go away in 24 hours,” said one government official.
Haigh’s allies said she told Starmer about the conviction when she was appointed to the shadow cabinet in 2020. “The incident was disclosed in full,” said one ally.
People close to Starmer confirmed Haigh had told him at the time that she had a previous conviction for a fraud offence.
But a Downing Street spokesperson said Haigh had resigned after “new information came to light”. Asked whether or not Haigh had told Starmer the full truth in 2020, he refused to answer.
Haigh said she told police she lost a phone, which had been provided by Aviva, her employer at the time, during a “terrifying” mugging on a night out in 2013, only to discover later it had not been taken after all.
“I should have immediately informed my employer and not doing so straight away was a mistake,” Haigh said in her resignation letter. She had worked as a public policy manager at the insurer, which declined to comment.
Aviva carried out a review of Haigh’s behaviour in 2014, but she quit that year before it was complete, according to people briefed on the internal inquiry.
The company investigation was not confined to a single phone. It also involved a phone Haigh lost during a holiday in Portugal, according to the MP’s allies.
However, they said she had not been told about the existence of the internal probe.
Haigh worked at Aviva alongside Sam White, a longtime Labour adviser who was the insurer’s director of public policy in 2014. White later became Starmer’s chief of staff in 2021.
Haigh said on Thursday that she had received a discharge for her 2014 conviction, the “lowest possible outcome”. Haigh was elected MP in 2015.
“Whatever the facts of the matter, this issue will inevitably be a distraction from delivering on the work of this government,” Haigh said in her resignation letter.
Starmer’s allies say they feared the “distraction” could involve days of stories about exactly what lay behind Haigh’s conviction and overshadow any future work she did as transport secretary.
Haigh’s resignation is the first by a cabinet minister since Starmer led Labour to victory in July’s general election, and caps a difficult few weeks since chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the biggest tax increases in a generation in last month’s Budget.
Acknowledging Haigh’s resignation, Starmer said in a brief letter that she had helped to deliver an ambitious transport agenda. “I know you still have a huge contribution to make in the future,” he said.
On Friday the prime minister’s spokesperson said ministers were expected to adhere to the ministerial code, but was unable to say whether this was relevant to Haigh’s situation.
One ally of Haigh said Starmer was “totally weak”, adding: “She literally told him about this years ago, but what does he do . . . he makes her go.”
Haigh’s exit comes at a critical moment for the government’s transport policy. As transport secretary, she was responsible for everything from High Speed 2 rail to legislation on electric vehicle sales.
She had been leading fraught talks with the car industry over ways to water down rules on EV sales. The news also comes less than 24 hours after her flagship rail nationalisation bill became law, paving the way for the reversal of the privatisation of the railways.
Haigh’s departure marks the loss of one of the more leftwing figures in Starmer’s cabinet.
In October she criticised P&O Ferries as a “cowboy operator” over its decision to fire and rehire 800 workers two years ago, and said she was boycotting the business.
The incident caused a political storm, with Downing Street disowning the comments to convince the ferry group’s owner DP World to finalise a £1bn UK investment.
A spokesperson for the opposition Conservatives said Haigh was right to resign as a minister, claiming she had fallen short of the standards expected of an MP.
They added that Starmer needed to explain the “obvious failure of judgment to the British public” in appointing Haigh given her resignation letter says the prime minister knew about the conviction.
