Sheffield Heeley MP Louise Haigh has made history after being appointed Transport Secretary
Sheffield Heeley MP Louise Haigh has made history, after becoming the youngest and first female Sheffield MP to become a cabinet minister.
Louise has joined the cabinet of newly-elected Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, as Secretary of State for Transport, after taking up the same position in the Shadow Cabinet in 2021.
In addition to being the first female Sheffield MP to be given a cabinet role, Louise is also the youngest ever serving female cabinet minister at the age of 36. She is set to attend her first ever cabinet meeting from 11am this morning (Saturday, July 6, 2024).
Speaking after her appointment, Louise said: “It is an incredible honour to continue to represent my home in Parliament and to finally get the opportunity to deliver for Sheffield in a Labour Government.
“Transport is so important to the people of Sheffield, and I will put everything I have into putting the public back into our public transport system and delivering the connectivity we deserve.
“This will be the most public transport-committed government in Britain’s history. One of my first jobs will be to sort out the rail and bus networks across the country.
“Labour will bring rail franchises into public ownership as contracts expire and create publicly-owned Great British Railways – delivering the biggest overhaul to our railways in a generation.
“And we will massively expand franchising powers, giving every community the power to take back control of our buses.
“Labour will deliver transport network that modern Britain needs – here in Yorkshire and in every corner of the country.”
Labour swept to power with a landslide, after gaining a majority of 412, following Thursday’s (July 4, 2024) General Election.
The party took every single seat in Sheffield, Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster.
Louise was re-elected on Thursday night with a majority of more than 15,000.
Born and bred in Sheffield, she has been the MP for Sheffield Heeley for the last nine years and thanked everyone who voted for her.
As Secretary of State for Transport, Louise says she will be relentlessly focused on delivering a publicly owned, passenger centred railway and giving communities everywhere the power to take back control of buses.
She is one of six Yorkshire MPs to be appointed to the cabinet.
A spokesperson for Louise said she is ‘renowned for her hard work’.
Early in her career she was described by then-House speaker John Bercow as having ‘terrier-like intensity’ in her campaigning against the closure of tax offices. The following year the House of Commons library named her the most hard-working of the new intake of MPs.