Keir Starmer refuses to provide extra particulars of Louise Haigh resignation

Sir Keir Starmer has refused to provide extra details about why Louise Haigh resigned as transport secretary final week.

Haigh stepped down after it emerged she had pleaded responsible to a fraud offence a decade in the past, a conviction she reportedly advised Sir Keir about in 2020, when he appointed her to his shadow cupboard.

Throughout Prime Minister’s Questions, Conservative chief Kemi Badenoch requested why the prime minister had appointed a “convicted fraudster” as his transport secretary.

Sir Keir stated Haigh had been proper to resign “when new info got here to gentle”.

However, when requested by Badenoch for particulars concerning the new info, he replied: “I am not going to reveal personal info.”

He added that Haigh’s swift resignation was a “marked distinction” to the behaviour of the earlier Conservative authorities and accused Badenoch of being “obsessive about the Westminster points”.

Badenoch stated the prime minister was “obfuscating” and that he owed MPs “a proof”.

“The nation wants conviction politicians not politicians with convictions,” she stated.

Hitting again, Sir Keir stated two of Badenoch’s predecessors had “convictions”, a reference to Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, who each obtained mounted penalty notices for breaking Covid guidelines.

Fastened penalty notices will not be classed as felony convictions, supplied the effective is paid on time.

Later, responding to Badenoch’s questions, a Labour supply stated: “If the Conservatives need to have a row concerning the extent of their criminality in workplace, that is effective by us.

“The very fact is that her two predecessors had been discovered responsible of breaking the legislation, partying in Downing Road whereas telling everybody else to observe the foundations, one thing which the chief of the opposition described just some weeks in the past as ‘overblown’. Perhaps she’ll need to retract that assertion.”

Final week, Haigh turned the primary minister to resign because the Labour authorities took workplace in July.

On Thursday night, Sky Information and The Occasions revealed particulars of her previous conviction.

Haigh subsequently issued an announcement giving additional particulars of the incident, which befell in 2013 when she was working for insurance coverage firm Aviva.

She stated she had reported a mugging to the police and {that a} work cell phone was one of many gadgets that had been stolen.

She later stated she discovered the handset in a drawer at dwelling.

Turning on the cellphone “triggered police consideration”, she stated, and the matter was taken to magistrates’ court docket for making a false report back to police.

Haigh stated: “Beneath the recommendation of my solicitor I pleaded responsible – regardless of the actual fact this was a real mistake from which I didn’t make any acquire.”

She obtained a conditional discharge six months earlier than changing into an MP within the 2015 normal election.

Early on Friday, the morning after the small print of the conviction emerged, Haigh despatched a resignation letter to the prime minister, saying she didn’t need to grow to be a distraction.

The BBC has been advised by Whitehall sources that she had advised Sir Keir about her conviction when he picked her to be in his shadow cupboard in 2020.

She didn’t inform the federal government’s propriety and ethics staff about it when she turned a member of the cupboard after Labour received July’s normal election.

She believed it was ample to have disclosed her spent conviction to Sir Keir when Labour was in opposition, the BBC has been advised.

On Friday, a Downing Road spokesperson refused to say what Sir Keir knew concerning the conviction, solely that he accepted her resignation after “additional info” emerged.

The spokesperson was questioned for 25 minutes on the problem however refused to provide extra particulars.

A daily briefing with journalists after Wednesday’s Prime Minister Questions was no totally different, with a Labour spokesperson current merely saying they might not get into “personal discussions with former cupboard ministers”.

Nonetheless the BBC understands that some in Downing Road had been sad Haigh had not run her clarification previous them earlier than releasing it to the media on Thursday and felt she ought to have advised senior civil servants concerning the conviction on changing into a minister.

On Wednesday, Badenoch’s spokesperson stated: “It is not ok to say this can be a personal matter.”

“Did he know concerning the felony conviction and put her within the Cupboard anyway? Or did he not and that’s the reason he fired her on Friday?

“He has not come clear with the general public. This can be a severe matter.”