British Prime Minister Keir Starmer appointed a new transport minister on Friday, November 29.
As per Reuters, this comes after the youngest member of his cabinet Louise Haigh resigned over a decade-old guilty plea for misleading the police.
Louise resigned after admitting to a minor offence involving a false claim that her mobile phone had been stolen.
Shortly after her resignation, Starmer appointed Heidi Alexander, who previously served as London’s deputy mayor for transport from 2018 to 2021.
In a letter to Starmer, Louise wrote that she had informed the police her mobile phone was lost during a “terrifying” mugging on a night out in 2013, only to later discover the phone was still at her home.
Louise further said she was standing down as the issue "will inevitably be a distraction from delivering on the work of this government and the policies to which we are committed.”
The opposition Conservative Party backed her decision, saying that Haigh had “made the right choice,” but in the meantime they raised questions about why Starmer had appointed her if he knew about her fraud conviction.
At the age of 37, she became the youngest cabinet member and was responsible for government policies such as the rail nationalisation bill, which was passed into law this week.
