The transport secretary Louise Haigh has quit after she admitted pleading guilty to a fraud offence.

She was convicted of falsely telling police her work mobile phone had been stolen during a mugging in 2013.

She admitted that, at the time, she told police she had lost her work mobile phone in the incident, but later found it had not been taken.

Haigh was given a conditional discharge following the incident which happened before she became an MP.

In her resignation letter she described the mugging as “terrifying”, but that when she later realised the phone was in her house she should have immediately told her employer and not doing so straight away was a mistake.

“I appreciate that whatever the facts of the matter, this issue will inevitably be a distraction from delivering on the work of this government and the policies to which we are both committed,” she said in the letter to the Prime Minister.

As transport secretary, Haigh was responsible for pushing through her rail nationalisation bill, reversing its privatisation, as well as HS2.

She was also leading talks on how to reverse weakening demand for EV sales.

A successor is likely to be announced today.

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