Starmer Under Pressure to Reveal What He Knew About Louise Haigh’s Fraud Conviction Before She Quit Cabinet

Keir Starmer is facing growing pressure to explain why he allowed a convicted fraudster to be part of his top team for more than four years, after once stating that “you can’t be a lawmaker and a lawbreaker”. The Mail has more.

Louise Haigh quit as Transport Secretary early this morning after confirming she pleaded guilty to an offence involving an insurance claim for a stolen mobile phone that was not stolen. 

No. 10 today suggested that the 37-year-old hid the full details of the 2014 conviction when she joined Sir Keir’s team in 2020.

However friends of the prominent Left-winger dispute this and say she told the PM everything. A spokesman for Sir Keir today was unable to expand on what he knew and when he knew it when grilled by reporters at lunchtime.

It is embarrassing for the PM after his May 2022 demand for a squeaky clean administration. In a Commons attack on then PM Boris Johnson over the Partygate scandal he demanded Tory MPs remove him, saying: “The game is up. You cannot be a lawmaker and a lawbreaker, and it is time to pack his bags.”

In a lengthy briefing with reporters a spokesman for the PM would only say that the PM accepted her resignation, the first the Labour Government has suffered since the July election, “following further information emerging” today.

A Conservative Party spokesman said this “raises questions as to why the Prime Minister appointed Ms. Haigh to Cabinet with responsibility for a £30 billion budget”.

“The onus is now on Keir Starmer to explain this obvious failure of judgement to the British public,” he added.

Swindon South MP Heidi Alexander, who was a Deputy London Mayor under Sadiq Khan, was unveiled as her replacement this morning. Ms Haigh, who is seen as a leading member of Labour’s ‘soft Left’, was one of the longest-serving members of the Starmer shadow and full Cabinet, having been appointed interim Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary in 2020 and Shadow Transport Secretary the following year.

Last night it emerged she appeared in court for wrongly claiming her mobile phone had been stolen in an insurance claim to her then employer, Aviva, after she was mugged, pleading guilty. 

But it was also claimed that the Sheffield Heeley MP – a former special constable and shadow policing minister – revealed her spent conviction when she joined Sir Keir’s team four years ago.

It raises questions over what the PM and other senior officials knew about her criminal past, and whether he was prepared to accept it. 

In a statement Ms. Haigh said she discovered “some time later” that the work phone had not been taken. 

She said the matter was a “genuine mistake” from which she “did not make any gain”. She pleaded guilty to fraud by misrepresentation after a probe by her then employer, insurance giant Aviva, and magistrates gave her the “lowest possible outcome”.

Worth reading in full.