In recent years, Labour has made great political hay out of allegations of rule-breaking. The party was never slow to criticise Boris Johnson’s government for breaches of lockdown, with Sir Keir keen to depict himself as ‘Mr Rules.’ So it is sub-optimal, to say the least, that a senior minister has tonight admitted pleading guilty to an offence connected with misleading the police while she was a parliamentary candidate.
Louise Haigh, the Transport Secretary, appeared at Camberwell Green Magistrates’ Court six months before the 2015 general election, after making a false report to officers that her mobile phone had been stolen. Haigh claimed that she was ‘mugged while on a night out’ in 2013 and then reported the incident to the police. She gave officers a list of items she believed had been taken – including a work mobile phone. But in a statement to Sky News, the minister admitted she discovered ‘some time later’ that ‘the mobile in question had not been taken’.
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