London (Parliament Politics Magazine) – The British Prime Minister appointed Heidi Alexander as the new transport secretary after Louise Haigh’s resignation over admitting to a mobile phone offence.
Heidi Alexander has been appointed as the new transport secretary after Louise Haigh resigned on Friday morning.
Ms Haigh, who is the youngest member of Starmer’s cabinet quit after admitting to a guilty plea from a decade ago for misleading the police.
Just hours after Haigh’s resignation, PM Starmer appointed Heidi Alexander, the former deputy mayor for transport in London from 2018 to 2021, she represented Lewisham East as the MP from 2010 to 2018, during which time she worked as the Shadow Health Secretary under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party.
Downing Street refused to confirm if the prime minister knew about Ms Haigh’s criminal conviction when he appointed her.
Ms Alzender, MP for Swindon South since July’s general election, has been appointed to the new role after serving as a justice minister.
The opposition Conservative Party raised questions about Sir Keir’s judgment after Haigh’s resignation and said Haigh had “done the right thing”, with reports on Thursday revealing that he had appointed her to his shadow cabinet in 2020 even though she had disclosed the offence to him.
According to The Independent News, a very close ally of the former transport secretary confirmed that PM Sir Keir knew “all the facts” about her conviction when he appointed her to his shadow cabinet. At the time, the Labour leader was described as ‘extremely empathetic’ toward Ms Haigh.
Sir Keir’s spokesperson repeatedly told journalists that her resignation came in the wake of new information, adding “Following further information emerging, the prime minister has accepted Louise Haigh’s resignation.”
In response to whether Sir Keir believed Ms Haigh was entirely honest during her appointment to the shadow cabinet, they replied that they would not ‘get into individual conversations.
The mobile phone incident happened in 2013 when she was in her 20s, and she told police she had been mugged a night out.
Louise Haigh, a former special constable in the Metropolitan Police from 2009 to 2011 but was reportedly working for insurance firm Aviva at the time of the offence, stated “Sometime later, I discovered that the mobile in question had not been taken. In the interim, I had been issued with another work phone.”
She further stated that it was a ‘genuine mistake’ and that she did not gain anything from it.
The newly appointed transport minister had a long political career, starting as a councillor before serving as the MP for Lewisham East.
She stepped down from Jeremy Corbyn’s cabinet during a protest, calling it a ‘dysfunctional cabinet,’ and left Parliament in 2018 to join London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s transport team.
She was elected to represent Swindon South in the July general election and quickly received an offer for a ministerial position in the Justice Department.
Ms Heidi also voted in favour of the assisted dying bill in the House of Commons yesterday. MPs debated for around five hours on the legalization of the bill.
The assisted dying bill was backed by 330 MPs, while 275 voted against it.