Top Cabinet minister squirms as he is grilled over ‘hypocrite’ Keir Starmer’s previous declare ‘lawmakers cannot be lawbreakers’… earlier than appointing Louise Haigh as transport secretary with a fraud conviction

A Cabinet minister was left squirming today when grilled about Sir Keir Starmer‘s past claim that ‘lawmakers can’t be lawbreakers’ – before the PM went on to appoint an MP with a fraud conviction to his top team.

In a fresh blow to Sir Keir’s stumbling premiership, Louise Haigh resigned as transport secretary on Friday after it emerged she pleaded guilty to an offence a decade ago.

She is the first Cabinet casualty of Sir Keir’s Government and questions remain about what the PM knew of her past conviction before appointing her to the role in July.

It is claimed Ms Haigh, MP for Sheffield Heeley, declared her spent conviction to Sir Keir when he appointed her to his shadow cabinet in 2020 when Labour were in opposition.

But she is said not to have told the Government’s propriety and ethics team when Labour won power at July’s general election and she took over the Department for Transport.

Downing Street has refused to say what Sir Keir previously knew of Ms Haigh’s conviction, but said the PM accepted her resignation after ‘further information’ emerged.

Appearing on the BBC‘s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show this morning, senior Cabinet minister Pat McFadden refused to reveal what the ‘further information’ was.

‘I don’t know excatly who said what to who at the end of last week,’ he said. ‘But the result was she resigned, that’s the critical fact. And I regret that she felt she had to go.

‘Because Lou is a good colleague, I thought she was doing a good job. But she’s made that decision, we’ve got a new transport secretary now and we’ll carry on with the agenda.’

Mr McFadden, the Chancellor of the Ducy of Lancaster, also denied Sir Keir is a hypocrite for appointing Ms Haigh to his frontbench.

He was confronted by a clip of the Labour leader speaking in May 2022, at the height of the Partygate row, when Sir Keir told the House of Commons: ‘You cannot be a lawmaker and a lawbreaker.’

Asked if Sir Keir was a hypocrite for making those comments before going on to appoint Ms Haigh to his Cabinet two years later, Mr McFadden replied: ‘No, he’s not.

‘I think he’s appointed a good Cabinet. It’s a more united Cabinet than I’ve seen in many years, and we’re working together on this plan for change that we’re going to publish this week which will set out our priorities.’

Commenting on the PM’s past comments, Mr McFadden said: ‘He’s saying if you’re sitting in Cabinet, you can’t be breaking the law.

‘It’s not the case that anyone who’s ever broken the law ever can’t serve in Parliament.’

Sir Keir is facing a backlash from among left-wing Labour MPs over Ms Haigh’s departure from Government.

Veteran backbencher Diane Abbott, the former shadow home secretary, accused the PM of throwing Ms Haigh ‘under the bus’.

‘He knew that she had this problem with her claim for her mobile phone,’ Ms Abbott told the same programme.

‘He knew it from the beginning. And now to throw her under the bus like this, I don’t get it.

‘She was one of our more effective Cabinet ministers and why do this to her? Again, he doesn’t seem to understand, it makes him look bad.’

Ms Abbott earlier said it was ‘interesting’ that the Government had ‘wheeled out the recycled Blairite Pat McFadden’ to appear on the Sunday morning political shows.

‘They always wheel him out when they’ve got a problem,’ she added.

Mr McFadden earlier told Sky News that Ms Haigh’s departure – which follows incidents such as the PM’s ‘freebies row’ – had not made the Government look ‘chaotic’.

‘I don’t accept that for a minute,’ he said. ‘If you take this Louise Haigh situation, the story came to light, was dealt with very quickly.

‘Louise has decided to resign by the end of the day. This isn’t something that dragged on for weeks.

‘It isn’t something where… endless stories about it before action was taken, and within 24 hours, we have a new transport secretary.’

Responding to Mr McFadden’s comments, Tory MP and Conservative co-chairman Nigel Huddleston, said: ‘Keir Starmer appointed Louise Haigh to Cabinet to run a £30billion budget, despite knowing she had a fraud conviction.

‘Pat McFadden was today unable to answer what Starmer knew and when. This serious question needs to be answered and it’s time for Keir Starmer to come clean.’

Ms Haigh resigned as transport secretary after it emerged she pleaded guilty to a criminal offence related to incorrectly telling police that a work mobile phone was stolen in 2013.

She pleaded guilty in court over the incident on the advice of a solicitor and magistrates gave her the ‘lowest possible outcome’, Ms Haigh said in a statement.

It is understood that the offence was ‘fraud by false representation’ and that the conviction is now spent.

Ms Haigh’s employer at the time, Aviva, launched an investigation after she said that company mobile phones had been stolen or had gone missing on repeated occasions, the Times reported.

However, a source close to Ms Haigh disputed that multiple phones were involved. She resigned from her job at Aviva, it is understood.

She 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.