Melanie Onn

Early life and career

Born in Grimsby, at the age of seventeen Onn was supported by Doorstep, a Grimsby-based charity which provides housing support to young people. Onn was educated at Franklin College, Grimsby, and studied Politics, Philosophy and International Studies at the University of Middlesex.

Onn worked for 10 years at the Labour Party's head office, becoming the head of the party's Compliance Unit. In 2009, she stood in the European Parliament elections for the Yorkshire and Humber region, placed fifth on Labour's regional list. From 2010, she was a regional organiser for the public sector trade union UNISON.

Parliamentary career

Onn was selected as the Labour candidate for Great Grimsby from an all-women shortlist in July 2014, following the announcement that the sitting MP, Austin Mitchell, would retire at the next election. In the 2015 general election, she retained the seat for her party with a majority of 4,540, up from 714 in the previous election.

After having been elected, Onn met with the then Prime Minister David Cameron, to discuss the future of a Grimsby seafood firm, Young's Seafood, which was due to cut hundreds of jobs after losing a major contract to Sainsbury's. Onn successfully negotiated £1.3 million for the site, helping to keep jobs in Grimsby.

Onn is an advocate of the renewable energy industry and has worked to promote the industry in Grimsby, which Tom Bawden in a 2016 article in The Independent newspaper described as the 'renewable energy capital of England'.

On 20 July 2015, she abstained from the vote on the Conservative government's Welfare Reform and Work Bill, which restricted child benefit to the first two children in a family and lowers the benefit cap from £26,000 to £20,000 per household. The bill was voted through by 308 to 124 Members of Parliament, despite 48 Labour MPs disobeying the party line of abstention by voting against the bill.

In September 2015, Onn was appointed Shadow Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, working alongside Shadow Leader Chris Bryant.

Onn campaigned for Britain to remain in the European Union, despite her constituency ultimately voting to leave. Following the result, she voted in the House of Commons to trigger Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, the process by which member states may withdraw from the European Union, stating that it would be ‘wrong’ to attempt to block the outcome of the referendum.

She resigned her position of Shadow Deputy Leader of the Commons in Jeremy Corbyn's frontbench on 27 June 2016. In her letter of resignation, she told Corbyn that the party would remain divided as long as he stayed in post.

On 7 September 2016, Onn introduced a private members' bill to protect workers' rights in British law after Brexit. The bill was scheduled for its second reading in the House of Commons on 13 January 2017, but was successfully filibustered by Conservative members of Parliament.

On 3 July 2017 she returned to the Labour front bench in the position of Shadow Housing Minister.

Onn is a campaigner to change the law to give greater protection to alleged rape victims. Following the R v Evans case, she said that "going through the victim’s sexual history is much more likely to put people off reporting". She is also an Ambassador for the kinship care charity Mentor and is a supporter of the Family Rights Group.