Louise Haigh appointed Secretary of State for Transport

The Rt Hon Louise Haigh, MP for Sheffield Heeley, has been appointed Secretary of State for Transport in Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s incoming Cabinet.

Haigh quickly established a new motto for the Department for Transport to ‘move fast and fix things’, also promising the Department would ‘think about infrastructure and services together at every turn.’

She has set out five strategic priorities, including:

• improving performance on the railways and driving forward rail reform
• improving bus services and growing usage across the country
• transforming infrastructure to work for the whole country, promoting social mobility and tackling regional inequality
• delivering greener transport
• better integrating transport networks.

More recently, the Secretary of State has laid out plans to support local authorities to introduce 20 mile-per-hour limits, cycle lanes and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods in a notable departure from the previous Government’s stance on such issues.