Haigh admits pleading guilty to 2014 criminal offence



Transport Secretary Louise Haigh has admitted pleading guilty to a criminal offence relating to a police investigation over a mobile phone she claimed was stolen.

In a statement, Haigh said she told police she had lost her phone during a mugging on a night out in 2013 but later found it had not been taken.  She said it was a "genuine mistake" but had been advised by a lawyer "not to comment" during a police interview. The police then referred the case to the Crown Prosecution Service, she said.

She said she pleaded guilty to making a false report to police at magistrates' court six months before becoming an MP in the 2015 election, and received a discharge - the "lowest possible outcome".

A discharge is a type of sentence given to someone who is guilty of an offence but where the court decides not to impose a significant punishment.

Whitehall sources have told the BBC that the transport secretary declared her discharge on appointment to the shadow cabinet when the Labour Party was in opposition.

The BBC has been told Haigh received a conditional discharge, but have not been able to confirm details of the specific offence.

In a statement, Haigh said: “In 2013 I was mugged while on a night out. I was a young woman and the experience was terrifying.  I reported it to the police and gave them a list of what I believed had been taken - including a work mobile phone that had been issued by my employer.  Some time later I discovered that the mobile in question had not been taken. In the interim I had been issued with another work phone.  The original work device being switched on triggered police attention and I was asked to come in for questioning.  My solicitor advised me not to comment during that interview and I regret following that advice.  The police referred the matter to the CPS and I appeared before magistrates' court.  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. The magistrates accepted all of these arguments and gave me the lowest possible outcome - a discharge - available.”

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.

She is also a former Special Constable, a volunteer police officer with full powers of arrest, and served with the Metropolitan Police until 2011.

The chair of the Conservative Party said the prime minister has "serious questions" to answer about the matter.  Nigel Huddleston said in a statement: "These are extremely concerning revelations about the person responsible for managing £30bn of taxpayers' money."

Such a shame, she was someone that rail industry executives have said they could work with she had a clear view of what the Government aims were but listened to and took in their opinions

At least she went quickly, unlike the antics of the previous administration

Louise Haigh has resigned as transport secretary after pleading guilty to a criminal offence related to incorrectly telling police that a work mobile phone was stolen in 2013.

In a letter to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Haigh said she was “totally committed to our political project” but that it would be "best served by my supporting you from outside government”.

Her resignation comes a day after she admitted that she told police she had lost her phone during a mugging on a night out but later found it had not been taken.

She said it was a "genuine mistake" but had been advised by a lawyer "not to comment" during a police interview. The police then referred the case to the Crown Prosecution Service, she said.

She said she pleaded guilty to making a false report to police at a magistrates' court six months before becoming an MP in the 2015 election, and received a discharge - the "lowest possible outcome".

Whitehall sources told the BBC that the transport secretary declared her discharge on appointment to the shadow cabinet when the Labour Party was in opposition.

As reported on the BBC


Others may not share my view, but I am shocked that the follow-up to a mugging (which was an assault that no-one is suggesting was her choice) leads to the loss of someone who seemed to be shaping up to being a good secretary of state for Transport. We would like our politicians to be perfect, but we would be wise to accept the great deal of good and skills they have to offer if they have been slightly less than that perfection.   

Edit - adding that I do wonder slightly if we have a full story

Odd that she's resigning now, despite making Starmer aware of her criminal offence when he appointed her to the Shadow Cabinet.

Odd that she's resigning now, despite making Starmer aware of her criminal offence when he appointed her to the Shadow Cabinet.

The phrase "thrown under a bus" springs to mind...

It is speculation, but reading the statement set out on the BBC website, the problem appears to be that she retained it after she found it and was found out "when she switched it on".

The inference is that she wrongly was retaining it, possibly for her own use, rather than immediately notifying the Police and handing it in.

While that might seem a fine distinction, it is an important one. It changes an innocent error to possible theft.

Fraud....she obtained a more modern one from her employer while retaining the old one & not handing it back.

Fraud by failing to disclose information

A person is in breach of this section if he—
(a)dishonestly fails to disclose to another person information which he is under a legal duty to disclose, and

(b)intends, by failing to disclose the information—

(i)to make a gain for himself or another, or

(ii)to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss

Not quite Chris - the new phone would have remained a work tool she was issued with for work by her employer. The issue is that there was the appearance that she might have been trying to retain for her own benefit the phone she reported as having been lost.

We don't have details of the actual offence, but (again speculation by a retired lawyer who was not a criminal lawyer and who learned his criminal law as a student before the modern law of theft and fraud was enacted) it appears that prosecution may have been under s3 of the Fraud Act 2006, which provides


If there was no intention, then she should have defended the charge. The problem would have been (and here we do not have the material facts as to timing) it appears that she was found out when she switched on the phone and this came to the attention of the Police. The failure to report it immediately to the Police and her employer is something that is "unfortunate". Although we don't know how much she originally told him, Starmer's problem is that as a former Director of Public Prosecutions he ought to have perhaps investigated further a conviction for an offence involving dishonesty.

I agree that this looks minor compared to BoJo's serial mendacity, the disgraceful affair if the attempt to change the rules of conduct to "help out" Owen Patterson after his egregious breach of the rules against taking payments to advocate for business interests (or indeed, in the interests of balance, the murky affair of Peter Mandelson's undisclosed loan from Geoffrey Robinson when making a mortgage application), but Haigh did study law so should have been aware of the basic principles. Starmer also has a problem in that his "cleaning up politics" agenda has already been undermined by his (and his chancellor's) acceptance of substantial gifts from Lord Ali. As both a lawyer and former senior public servant he should have known that he should have refused them.

To her credit, it looks like she "jumped" rather than was "pushed".

Not quite Chris - the new phone would have remained a work tool she was issued with for work by her employer. The issue is that there was the appearance that she might have been trying to retain for her own benefit the phone she reported as having been lost.

Being reported by the BBC as having pleaded guilty to a fraud offence
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxy1kp73y9o

I appreciate that media outlets do get reporting wrong, so show me another outlet that thinks she pleaded guilty to a different charge?

Louise Haigh's swift resignation prompts questions



Politics, with a big majority government, will be much quieter, some said.

Not a bit of it.

Here we are on a Friday, traditionally the sleepiest of Westminster’s weekdays, and MPs confront a potentially generational defining vote on assisted dying while the government confronts its first cabinet resignation.

The first cabinet resignation is a moment for any government and a rite of passage for any prime minister.

There is the first enforced shuffle of personnel at the top table for a start, a headache for Downing Street as they scour the subs bench for replacements, knowing that an appointment of an existing minister itself creates another vacancy.

Louise Haigh was already the first cabinet minister that Sir Keir Starmer publicly rebuked, over remarks about P&O Ferries last month.

Now we have the ritual exchange of letters and the ritual blizzard of further questions.

First, those letters, external and in particular the prime minister’s letter to Haigh, which is blunt in its brevity.

Prime ministers often manage to wax lyrical at considerable length in a letter marking a departure, however tortuous or headline-making the whole saga has been.

In this instance, news of the resignation came within 12 hours of the story first breaking, and yet the prime minister’s words appear perfunctory.

The general mood in the Labour Party and in government is one of slight bafflement.  Many were still getting their head around the revelations – which first appeared on Sky News and in The Times on Thursday evening - when they woke up this morning to the news that Haigh was gone.

Plenty believe the sequence of events described in Haigh’s account was too minor to necessitate her departure, in the absence of any further revelations, though some believe she made the right political decision to go quickly rather than allow the issue to drag on for days.

One senior Labour figure described it as a “good resignation” which may allow her to come back at a later date with a clean slate.

We are also told that Haigh had told Sir Keir about the specifics of this case when he first appointed her to the shadow cabinet in 2020.

It's understood she didn't tell the government’s propriety and ethics team about her fraud conviction when she joined the cabinet in July.

They asked her specifically about unspent convictions. Her offence was spent.  This typically means the conviction remains on the offender’s criminal record for life, but they don’t have to reveal it in a job application.

Haigh believed, we're told, that having disclosed what had happened to Sir Keir in opposition, this was sufficient.

It's also understood she was unaware of any investigation by her former employer, Aviva, involving more than one mobile phone, as reported by The Times.

Haigh’s team have not denied this, but have not been drawn on it either.

Aviva is not commenting on the saga.

At the very least, this would have been the subject of even more intense further questions if she was still in the cabinet this morning rather than being on the backbenches.

The prime minister’s awareness of at least some of this saga has itself been seized upon by the Conservatives, who claim it raises questions about his judgement in appointing someone with a criminal conviction.

This would be awkward in any instance, but is particularly so given Sir Keir as leader of the opposition during the Partygate rows insisted lawbreakers can't be lawmakers.  But he then appointed one to his cabinet, albeit someone with a conviction from before they were an MP.

We are told the Conservatives got wind of this story during the general election campaign and hoped to be able to reveal it, but their tip-off referred to a different magistrates court from the one Haigh appeared at, so they could not prove it via court records.

While Haigh spoke in her resignation letter of “our political project,” she and the prime minister were not always politically simpatico.  She was seen as one of the few remaining left-wing ministers in his cabinet.  In the years before the election she was frequently tipped - wrongly - for dismissal at shadow cabinet reshuffles.

Heidi Alexander, previously a junior justice minister, has been named as her successor.  Before returning to the Commons in July, she spent more than three years as London’s deputy mayor for transport under Sadiq Khan.

There is a bigger picture too for Sir Keir.  He is desperate to move on from a sticky perception by many of a bumpy start for his government.  And now this.

I appreciate that media outlets do get reporting wrong, so show me another outlet that thinks she pleaded guilty to a different charge?

Being reported by the BBC as having pleaded guilty to a fraud offence
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxy1kp73y9o

I appreciate that media outlets do get reporting wrong, so show me another outlet that thinks she pleaded guilty to a different charge?

But who tipped off the BBC I wonder? Inside job?

There are some interesting theories going about. The words 'Heathrow', 'Runway' and 'Third' feature in some of them.

It seems it was a fraud offence, and that she received a conditional discharge. There's only one sanction lower than that in criminal law - absolute discharge - so the court must have seen this as a minor matter. It also means that the conviction is "spent", and would have been at the end of the discharge period, so 2015 at the latest. Although such a conviction would not have to be disclosed to an employer, disclosure would still be required for a cabinet minister, I reckon, given the potential security considerations. Louise Haigh told Sir Keir about it 4 years ago, and if anyone in government knows the law, it's him. Fraud aside, she did nothing wrong legally here, nor morally, but has decided to duck out of the way to prevent the issue being a distraction. Hopefully, no railways will be harmed. The road is probably clear for her to return to front-line duties after a period of, well, what? Everybody else getting used to it, I suppose, and Miss Haigh walking the straight and narrow in public. It's still likely to follow her around in the way that Ozzy Osborne is never introduced to new audiences without the "bit the head off a bat" comment, or like Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson for Monty Python fans.

The BBC may not have covered itself with glory here. Bringing a spent conviction to the attention of an employer is not in the spirit of rehabilitation of offenders. The "prompts questions" headline is a little sordid, too.

Another point of view; an ally of Liz Grey has been removed. If that is the case who is running the Cabinet/Government Keir Starmer or Morgan McSweeney? And who could be next?

I guess you mean Sue Gray?

Guilty as charged

No, my advice to anyone sane is to forget about being a MP. Stick to something where you are universally adored, like presenting TV cookery competitions.

I seem to remember that didn't work out very well for MP and celebrity food writer Clement Freud...

I seem to remember that didn't work out very well for MP and celebrity food writer Clement Freud...

And another gentleman (?) currently in the news.