Secretary of State for Transport
United Kingdom government cabinet minister
The secretary of state for transport, also referred to as the transport secretary, is a secretary of state in the Government of the United Kingdom, with overall responsibility for the policies of the Department for Transport. The incumbent is a member of the Cabinet of the United Kingdom.
The office holder works alongside the other transport ministers. The corresponding shadow minister is the shadow secretary of state for transport, and the secretary of state is also scrutinised by the Transport Select Committee.
The position of secretary of state for transport is held by Heidi Alexander, who was appointed by Keir Starmer following the resignation of Louise Haigh.
History
The Ministry of Transport absorbed the Ministry of Shipping and was renamed the Ministry of War Transport in 1941, but resumed its previous name at the end of the war.
The Ministry of Civil Aviation was created by Winston Churchill in 1944 to look at peaceful ways of using aircraft and to find something for the aircraft factories to do after the war. The new Conservative government in 1951 appointed the same minister to both Transport and Civil Aviation, finally amalgamating the ministries on 1 October 1953.
The ministry was renamed back to the Ministry of Transport on 14 October 1959, when a separate Ministry of Aviation was formed.
Transport responsibilities were subsumed by the Department for the Environment, headed by the Secretary of State for the Environment from 15 October 1970 to 10 September 1976.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Secretary of State for Transport” as united Kingdom government cabinet minister. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as united Kingdom government cabinet minister. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3246797. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1941, 1944, 1951 and 1953.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Secretary of State for Transport”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Secretary of State for Transport primary sources, Secretary of State for Transport archive and Secretary research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Secretary of State for Transport”?
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This entry incorporates text from “Secretary of State for Transport” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.