Louise Haigh has been elected as the Labor MP for Sheffield Heeley for the fourth time and has been appointed Transport Secretary in the cabinet of new Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
We look at Haigh’s history as a politician and particularly where it relates to transport.
Just before being elected MP for Sheffield Heeley in the 2015 general election, Haigh worked for three years as public policy manager for the multinational insurance company Aviva. In this role, she was responsible for corporate governance and responsible investment policy.
After being elected, Haigh’s first speech in the House of Commons was on financial services reform. “If we are to ensure a sustainable economy that benefits everyone, we must change the way our economy works, incentivize investment in green, productive sectors and penalize the short-term industries and practices that have done such damage to our economy and society. ” she said.
Nine months after the 2015 general election, a study of 177 new MPs who joined found that Haigh was the most active. During this period, she gave 90 speeches and asked 471 parliamentary questions.
Within six months of her first election, Haigh became a shadow cabinet minister. Over the next four years she went on to become Shadow Secretary for Culture, Media and Sport and then Shadow Secretary at the Home Office.
Her first shadow cabinet role was as shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland, which she took up in April 2020. She held the position until she was appointed shadow secretary of state for transport when Starmer reshuffled his shadow cabinet in November 2021. She remained shadow transport secretary until the general election was called in May 2024.
Official portrait of Louise Haigh
Traffic focus
Although transport did not appear to be high on her agenda – at least publicly – before 2021, Haigh was outraged by the Conservative government’s release of a statement in November 2021. Integrated Railway Plan.
This document confirmed that the eastern arm of High Speed 2 (HS2) from Birmingham to Leeds (via Sheffield) would not go ahead. In addition, Northern Powerhouse Rail – long promised as a new high-speed link between cities in the north from Liverpool to Hull – would only run between Manchester and Leeds, mostly on existing infrastructure.
Eleven days before she was appointed shadow transport secretary, Haigh made her views known Integrated Railway Plan Transparent.
“This news has been over 12 months overdue and it was definitely not worth the wait,” she said in a statement. “Once again the Prime Minister has shown people across the north of England that he and his government do not care.
“Growth and jobs are being held back here because we are not well connected to other cities. It is absolutely ridiculous that the UK’s fourth largest city does not have a direct airport link.
“The Prime Minister is forcing us to continue to rely on creaking Victorian infrastructure.”
On social media and in an interview with Sky News, she highlighted that the Northern Powerhouse Rail had been promised “more than 60 times in three different manifestos”.
Six months after becoming shadow transport secretary, Haigh spoke at the ASLEF Union Invest In Rail conference and said: “As a proud trade unionist, I am honored to be working with this fantastic union to build a world-class rail network that provides passengers, workers and the public deserves.”
She came out in support of the union as the government announced 10% budget cuts for the sector. “[It] will lead to one and only one thing, a controlled decline,” she said in a video posted on her social media on May 16, 2022.
She continued: “As Shadow Transport Secretary I see investment in rail and public transport as the engine of transformation we need to see. Not only because every £1 invested in rail contributes £8.50 to the economy, not only because rail accounts for 10% of all passenger journeys but only 1% of carbon emissions, but because rail and public transport connect talented young students with their chosen college, expands job opportunities for local people and drives the economic opportunities we need to see to connect our regions and nations and direct investment to areas of the country that have been neglected for too long.
“That is why I would like to see the rolling program of electrification, Northern Powerhouse Rail and HS2 delivered in full. It is essential to turn the tide in our incredibly unequal country, it is essential to help tackle the climate crisis and it would be a huge vote of confidence in our regions and nations.”
During the rail strikes that have plagued the country over the past few years, Haigh has been a constant critic of the transport minister. “Grant Shapps refuses to even meet with regional leaders to discuss a plan to restore services. What does the Secretary of Transportation do all day, anyway?” she asked in August 2022.
At the Labor party conference in September 2022, Haigh first revealed Labour’s plans to re-nationalise the country’s railways.
“[Labour in government] it will give the public back control of the essential public transport they depend on,” she said. “The Labor government we form will end the farce on our railways. We will end the failed experiments, discard the tired dogma that has disappointed the travelers. We will improve services and reduce fares and yes, Labor will bring our railways back into public ownership where they belong.
In February 2023, speaking at the Northern Transport Summit, Haigh outlined how a union government would “support the North and build infrastructure fit for the century ahead”. This included the full delivery of Northern Powerhouse rail and HS2.
In September 2023, as rumors spread of Sunak’s plan to scrap HS2 from Birmingham to Manchester, Haigh made a furious speech in Parliament.
“What started as a modern infrastructure plan left behind by the last Labor government to connect our biggest northern cities has turned into a humiliating Tory failure after 13 years of incompetence, waste and broken promises. The Great Railroad Betrayal,” she said. “£45 billion and the smallest possible economic impact of the original plan. £45 billion and the North was left with nothing. But honestly […] what would we expect from a prime minister who doesn’t travel across the north of england by rail? It’s always just flying over him.”
A few weeks later, once the cancellation of HS2 was confirmed and Network North’s compensation document was published, Haigh described it as an “absolute farce”.
Where Labor leader Starmer said there was “no way” she would resurrect HS2 if she came to power because the government had “blown the budget”, Whitehall sources said. The Telegraph in March 2024 that Haigh hoped to resume phase 2a between Birmingham and Crewe.
In December 2023, when Labor convened its rail review commission, chaired by ex-Siemens boss Jürgen Maier, Haigh declared: “Labour is serious about delivering transport infrastructure fit for the century ahead.” Therefore, I am pleased that Jürgen Maier will lead an expert opinion on better, faster and more cost-effective provision of infrastructure.”
Where Haigh focused on rail when it came to the election campaign, she began promoting roads to counter the Tory attack line that Labor waged a war on drivers.
She was the face of Labour’s Plan for the Automotive Sector, which included actions to “tackle our crumbling local roads” and delay the £320m A27 Arundel bypass project, which is said to provide enough money to fix up to 1 million potholes a year.
“We’re going to give local authorities a multi-year financial settlement so they have that budget over a longer period and can prevent potholes from happening in the first place,” she said in an interview about the plan for drivers. “I know how frustrating it is for people to see the local council go round and patch and fix a pothole and then have to come in two or three months and do it again. It’s really poor value for money and doesn’t add to the life of the road.”
Two weeks before the general election, Haigh said Metro: “Sheffield and Manchester are the two largest neighboring cities in Europe that do not have a motorway between them.
“Sheffield is the biggest city in Europe without a direct rail link to an airport, and the North as a whole loses £16 billion a year in lost growth due to the poor connections, delays and overcrowding we experience all the time on rail.”
She said her transport ministry would publish a long-term strategy to tackle the problem, in line with the central government’s 10-year infrastructure plan.
“We are not committing to a specific infrastructure plan because we don’t yet know the state of the finances or the delivery status of much of the infrastructure that the Tories have promised,” she added.
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