Keir Starmer appoints new Transport Secretary to replace Louise Haigh

Keir Starmer has appointed Heidi Alexander as his new Transport Secretary. It comes after Louise Haigh resigned over a mobile phone fraud offence.

Alexander had been courts minister since July and is a previous Deputy London Mayor for Transport. She returned to the House of Commons as MP for Swindon South in July, having previously served as an MP between 2010 and 2018.

It emerged yesterday that Haigh pleaded guilty to a criminal offence related to incorrectly telling police that a work mobile phone was stolen in 2013. It is understood the incident was disclosed to the Prime Minister when she joined the shadow cabinet.

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Haigh resigned from the Cabinet on Friday morning. On Thursday evening, Sky News and the Times newspaper reported that Haigh had admitted an offence in 2014 following the incident. She had reported to police the device was stolen when she was “mugged” in 2013.

It is understood that it was a fraud offence and that the conviction is now spent. Haigh said she discovered “some time later” that the phone had not been taken. 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”.

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.

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