One of the big headaches facing a prospective Burnham government is the welfare budget.
A major review of Personal Independence Payments (Pip) in England and Wales published on Thursday found the disability benefit to be “not fit for purpose” and in need of fundamental change.
Opposition parties, most notably the Conservatives, have called for the welfare budget to be cut in order to fund defence spending.
Sir Keir attempted to push through welfare reforms to cut £5bn a year from budget, but was forced into a major U-turn following a backbench revolt, which was led by Haigh among others.
She told the the welfare bill was “ballooning massively”, but said the cuts the Labour government had tried to push through would not sustainably bring down the welfare bill because it would push costs up “elsewhere in the system”.
Among Burnham’s flagship policies is devolving power away from Westminster to regional authorities – and he has indicated he could transfer decision-making away from the Treasury.
“The Treasury is all-powerful and does exert, I think, too much power over other areas of public policy,” Haigh said.
But she added: “I think whilst Andy has a clear plan for some of that because he thinks really deeply about rewiring the state, I don’t think in two and a half years we’ve got time to break up the treasury because it would just drag everything down and be a huge distraction.”
Haigh’s resignation in November 2024 was the first from Sir Keir Starmer’s government and came after it emerged she pleaded guilty to a fraud offence a decade prior.
She admitted telling police in 2013 she had lost her work mobile phone in a mugging, but later found it had not been taken.
She was given a conditional discharge by magistrates, following the incident which happened before she became an MP.
Haigh told Nick Robinson she had disclosed her conviction to Sir Keir when Labour was in opposition.
She said the PM had had initially been supportive of her when the story broke in the Times, before his then chief of staff Morgan McSweeney asked for her resignation.
Asked whether Sir Keir’s message in summer 2024 after coming to power was too gloomy, Haigh said: “We were elected on a mandate for change, and everyone was hopeful when we came in.
“There was excitement and ambition for a changed country, and the government immediately turned around and said that wasn’t possible.
“We’ve just never been able to recover from that, no matter how many resets [Sir] Keir Starmer and the rest of the government attempted, it could never get itself out of that.”
