Dame Chi Onwurah

Party affiliation

Parliament's party history for this member: Labour (6 May 2010 – present).

Register of interests

Register on Parliament's site

Latest on this tracker 252

1. 2 Nov 2026·Parliament·Dame Chi Onwurah

   Immigration: Earned Settlement

   I commend my right hon. Friend for consulting so widely in developing the earned settlement proposals and for listening to the representations of care workers in particular. I must express my astonishment at the refusal of Conservative Members to accept moral, social, financial or political responsibility for their failed immigration policies. These proposals will nevertheless adversely affect many. May I raise in particular early career researchers—postdocs and so on—who will not be earning £50,000 a year but will be contributing to our scientific understanding? Will my right hon. Friend meet me to discuss the impact on our science base?

   Hansard source
2. 2 Nov 2026·Parliament·Dame Chi Onwurah

   Budget Resolutions

   It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, and let me add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Sagal Abdi-Wali) on her excellent maiden speech. This is a Budget to create growth in every postcode, and nowhere is better placed than Newcastle to manufacture, innovate and grow if given the tools and opportunities to do so. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has clearly recognised this, allocating funding for investment and giving welcome attention to our region’s economic potential with the announcement of the international investment summit in Gateshead next spring. We have always been a city that builds, that innovates, that delivers, whether it is in advanced manufacturing, engineering, digital technology, energy or professional services. It was growing up in Newcastle surrounded by the legacy of great Geordie engineers and inventors, in a culture that championed making and building things, that inspired me to become an engineer. The north-east hosts world-leading companies and research institutions, but after 14 years of Conservative austerity, my constituents still find significant barriers to social mobility and opportunity. Newcastle Central and West ranked bottom of 543 constituencies for attainment and outcomes in the “Crossing Paths” 2026 report. Having grown up on a council estate myself, I am heartbroken that the life chances of disadvantaged young people are so curtailed. One fifth of those aged 16 to 24 are characterised as NEET in the north-east, and I echo the Chancellor in saying that I refuse to write them off, unlike the last Conservative Government. I look forward to the upcoming publication of Alan Milburn’s report. He was recently in Newcastle, and I know that he seeks to make a real difference for the intelligent and ambitious young people I meet regularly across Newcastle Central and West. It is a difficult time for so many families across my constituency, squeezed by increasing bills in energy, housing and so on, so it is great to see the Budget directly address that. Some 60,000 properties in the constituency will receive £100 towards their energy bills this winter, and I welcome the £1.5 billion in additional funding to <span id="640" class="column-number" data-column-number="640"></span>deliver social and affordable housing and, of course, the £20 million in Pride in Place funding for Elswick in my constituency. After years of fighting for the investment we deserve, our region will no longer have to pick up the crumbs from the Whitehall table, with the new north-east good growth fund helping our fantastic mayor, Kim McGuinness, to improve our public transport and deliver major regional projects directly. I hope that giving £20 billion to the National Wealth Fund and the British Business Bank will support start-ups, spin-outs and research facilities in the north-east, not simply in the golden triangle. I wish the Chancellor had provided more support in two further areas. The attainment gap in education between the north-east and London is the highest since records began. To challenge that, I would like to see further investment in the incredible young people of Newcastle Central and West, on the scale of the London Challenge from 2003. Secondly, there was significant support for businesses, particularly small businesses, in the Budget, but I would like to have seen even more. Growing businesses will provide jobs for our young people, and small businesses have been heavily hit by higher taxes and less disposable income from many constituents. Finally, I hope that the Chancellor’s £15 billion defence investment plan will be used to support regional growth and investment, as he has promised, and in particular to address the unacceptable truth that the north-east sends the highest proportion of young people into the armed forces, yet receives the lowest proportion of defence investment spending. That is something I will be thinking about this Remembrance week. Young people and, indeed, everyone in the north-east deserves growth in every postcode, and I am grateful to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for providing the first steps to achieving that.

   Hansard source
3. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·Dame Chi Onwurah

   Topical Questions

   <Question HRSContentId="{B7158419-EC4D-4048-B786-52360A64EABE}">T5. <QuestionText HRSContentId="{5382A5D2-BB50-444D-A5A0-3DE76780693C}"></QuestionText>While knocking on doors in Denton Burn in Newcastle on Saturday, a resident said to me that we see these terrible images of families putting children on to small boats and of floods, wars and droughts all around the world, but we never hear what Britain is doing to help people stay and flourish where they are. I thought, “Well, he’s right actually.” Could the Secretary of State tell us what is the most successful or effective thing that the Department is doing to reduce migratory pressures?</Question>

   Hansard source
4. 22 Oct 2026·Parliament·Dame Chi Onwurah

   Digital Government

   Thank you so much, Ms Furniss. I am really grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this statement on the Science and Technology Committee’s report entitled “Rewiring the state: Delivering digital government” and to discuss the Government response. I place on the record my thanks to the Committee Clerks and specialists who supported this complex inquiry, as well as to all those who gave evidence, in person or in writing. Both the previous Government and the current one have spoken of their ambition to make the UK a truly digital state, transforming citizens’ experiences of the health service, the education and justice systems, and indeed all public services, increasing productivity and efficiency and reducing costs. I am a tech evangelist; I believe that technology should make the world work better for people, and my Committee welcomes and supports the Government’s ambitions, but our report raised serious concerns about how achievable they are. In our report, we identified four building blocks for successful digital transformation. The first is money. Money always matters, but we found that inadequate data on digital spend prevents the Government from making informed decisions or holding those responsible to account. The second is people. Do we have the right people and skills to deliver digital transformation and cultural change to ensure that skills are valued and embedded in leadership roles? For example, how many permanent secretaries have the digital experience required? The third is information and data security. There are serious data hygiene failures across the public sector. Public bodies hold public data on trust; it needs to meet the highest standards. The fourth is delivery. We need a detailed and measurable plan to ensure the success of the digital transformation agenda. We also identified four barriers to realising the benefits of digital transformation. The first is hype. Both tech companies and the Government are guilty of this. Tech companies hype their solutions, often without reference to the problems, and the Government talk up the impact, <span id="466WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="466WH"></span>such as the supposed £45 billion annual productivity saving from digitalisation. Hype undermines the credibility of the Government’s arguments, confuses and demoralises civil servants, and encourages the belief that over-optimism, rather than achievement and honesty, will be rewarded. The second barrier is legacy systems. Outdated, obsolete or unsupported IT infrastructure, systems, hardware or processes pose an unacceptable level of risk. Our report found that, without a plan to address legacy systems, the Government’s digital ambitions will struggle to be achieved. The third barrier is vendor lock-in. If significant costs or reductions in functionality are associated with changing vendors, we have vendor lock-in, whereby vendors can hold the Government hostage, raise prices, require additional contracts or reduce performance. The public sector depends on a small number of large digital and technology providers—such as Palantir, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services—and the Government appear to be worryingly comfortable with that. The fourth barrier is lack of technology sovereignty. While the over-reliance on a small number of foreign vendors exists, the Government cannot set out to deliver their own sovereign digital agenda for the United Kingdom or fully support a competitive UK tech ecosystem. The Government should set out a public sector definition of sovereignty. Palantir is a case study in three of the four barriers. Palantir’s relationship with the NHS began during the covid-19 pandemic when it was paid a nominal £1 fee to provide what its chief executive Louis Mosley described to us as “aggregating data”. It is now hyped as being uniquely essential to the NHS’s mission to save lives. It is a clear example of growing vendor lock-in as well as an over-reliance on foreign tech giants. Our report called on the Government to commit to exercising the February 2027 break clause in the federated data platform contract. I thank the Government for their response, which came from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, although I understand other Departments were involved, so it is a welcome example of cross-Government working. Some parts of it are excellent, particularly the commitment to develop a strategy within the Government Digital Service to end vendor lock-in. That is a real step forward, as is the commitment to strong central co-ordination to drive progress on fixing legacy systems across the public sector, which is what we recommended. An action plan is promised, as well as a remediation plan, subject to security considerations. The Government also reveal that 36 tech company employees have had access to either the federated data or specific datasets assigned by NHS England when initially Palantir said that none of its employees had access to it. So there is more transparency. Other parts of the response are less encouraging. Significantly, in response to our recommendation that GDS develop and publish a framework to evaluate the performance of digital spend, we are told that they cannot count spend by Department. So as we embark on a complete digital transformation, we do not know how much is being spent and on what. How can we ensure that Ministers make informed decisions and can be held to account? Every single Government Department <span id="467WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="467WH"></span>might be buying the same cloud services from the same vendor, and we will not know or be able to assess our resilience or performance. Despite repeated data breaches, the Government refuse to share which public bodies and Departments meet basic data hygiene practices. That is due to “security considerations”. So we cannot hold Government to account for bad data management because it might alert the Chinese—I fear they know our limitations better than we do. Rolling out AI-driven public services over bad data infrastructure is a recipe for disaster and will require strong, rigorous standards and implementation to address it. On open source, the Government are inconsistent and contradictory. They agree it is an important tool against vendor lock-in, but reject our recommendation that public bodies prioritise open-source tools and technology over proprietary offerings, citing the “essential commercial accountability” offered by suppliers of proprietary software. So is open source a good or a bad thing? The Government did not even engage with our request to provide impact assessments relating to the US CLOUD Act 2018, under which US headquartered companies can in principle be compelled to provide the US Government with access to UK customers’ data held in their UK data centres. The Government accept the need to strengthen sovereign capability and they promise updates, but reject a cross-Government strategy on sovereignty or a definition. They confirm efforts to support UK start-ups and scale-ups through procurement. Two further key issues: we learned for the first time that the digital inter-ministerial group has been replaced by an official-level bimonthly digital executive committee, which sounds like a significant downgrade, just as digital is moved from the centre of Government—the Cabinet Office—to DCMS. Yet there is no commitment to appointing a dedicated Cabinet-level Minister responsible for driving effective digital transformation across the public sector. Yesterday in the Committee hearing with Ministers on the machinery of government changes, the diffuse nature of responsibilities was apparent. Ministers and officials spoke repeatedly about working together effectively, but it does not give confidence that digital transformation will be achieved when there is not one person accountable for it or able to impose digital standards. Finally on Palantir, the Government state that if a decision is taken not to extend Palantir’s contract, then the contract includes measures to support transition and continuity of services. I have since had a letter from the Minister for Health Innovation emphasising the significant costs associated with moving to another vendor while denying that there is vendor lock-in. I am seeking further clarification. The British people deserve a modern, flexible digital state designed to meet their needs, with public services that improve their lives. Trust is essential to achieving that and bad data hygiene, outdated systems, vendor lock-in, hyped solutions and lack of sovereign capability is a recipe for failure. Without clear leadership that can drive and deliver the scale of change needed, we remain very concerned that there will be no successful digital rewiring of the state.

   Hansard source
5. 22 Oct 2026·Parliament·Dame Chi Onwurah

   Digital Government

   I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions, which go to the heart of the matter: the relationship between the public sector and business, and that between the public sector and the people it is meant to serve. On business, the public sector should be able to call on the support of businesses as they themselves adopt digital products and services. It should be able to include many different businesses, from Northern Ireland to the north-east of England and across the country, rather than being reliant on a small number of often monopolistic providers. That is a point that we make very strongly in our report. It is important that the interface between the Government and business be open and competitive and not be monopolised. That is one of the things we think that the Government’s response to our report, in terms of looking to ensure the end of vendor lock-in, should help to promote. On the interface with the public, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: the public should not need to be digital experts or super-knowledgeable on AI. The responsibility falls within Government to ensure that people’s data is safe and secure and that the public can trust the Government in handling that data, and to ensure that we have the best digital infrastructure, and transparent providers and suppliers as well.

   Hansard source
6. 22 Oct 2026·Parliament·Dame Chi Onwurah

   Digital Government

   I thank my right hon. Friend for her question and the expertise she brings to this debate, particularly with regard to working with our European allies. I very much agree that we should be working with our European allies on this matter.<span id="469WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="469WH"></span> As I have set out, there are concerns about Palantir, specifically with regard to vendor lock-in, hype and sovereign capability, but that underlines a wider desire for effective competition in the supply of technology. That is competition in terms of the companies and organisations but also the countries that offer the technology; we do not want to be dependent on one country. Europe should develop its own capacity, with companies that can deliver world-leading, excellent services. This should be a joint endeavour and ambition, and I was very pleased to meet with the French ambassador yesterday to discuss areas of shared ambition and concern when it comes to technology and its delivery and roll-out. Public trust is dependent on an understanding that the Government share the values of the public, and the public services do as well. Having a European technology offering in open competition with other countries and other offerings is a worthwhile ambition.

   Hansard source
7. 15 Oct 2026·Parliament·Dame Chi Onwurah

   Joint committee on Human Rights

   I thank my hon. Friend the Chair of the Joint Committee for this report. I should declare an interest as the Chair of the Science and Technology Committee. I guested on the inquiry, and I share the concerns regarding the potential harms to human rights and support the report’s call for effective principle-based regulation now. Does my hon. Friend agree with me, and with His Holiness the Pope in his “Magnificent Humanity” encyclical, that human rights are for humans, that the anthropomorphising of AI—going as far as ascribing human consciousness and human rights to AI—is an attempt by tech companies to limit their own liability as well as boosting the potential value of their shares?

   Hansard source
8. 15 Oct 2026·Parliament·Dame Chi Onwurah

   Science and Research Investment

   I welcome the Minister to his new role as well as this Government’s emphasis on driving growth through innovation in every region of our country, as recommended by my Committee’s recent report, “Flying Blind”. It was called that because it identified a lack of <span id="513" class="column-number" data-column-number="513"></span>data and information about the factors that drive growth and how to measure success in our regions and across clusters. The report called for a dashboard. Will the Minister tell me what progress has been made on that dashboard, and has he looked at the Cambridge x Manchester Partnership baseline report, which identified a number of indicators, including company stock, funded count, and disclosed funding by employee band?

   Hansard source
9. 10 Sep 2026·Parliament·Dame Chi Onwurah

   EU-UK Relationship

   An extraordinary debate is going on right now inside and outside AI companies about whether the possibility of AI destroying humanity is more or less than 10%. The European Union is moving ahead with a comprehensive AI regulatory framework, but the UK continues to rely on existing regulation. What discussions is the Minister having with the European Union about aligning AI regulation, especially given that Anthropic has refused to submit its model to the AI Security Institute? How is he ensuring that we can keep European and UK citizens safe?

   Hansard source
10. 9 Sep 2026·Parliament·Dame Chi Onwurah

    Education and Skills Reform

    I welcome my right hon. Friend to her exciting new role and I welcome her emphasis on the importance of technical and technological education. I am always struck by the energy, intelligence and ambition of the young people I meet across Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West, but after 14 years of Tory neglect they have been let down. The attainment gap between young people in the north-east and London is at its highest since records began. Will my right hon. Friend meet me to see how we can address that and ensure that young people in the north-east have the opportunities and the education they deserve?

    Hansard source

2024 General Election: Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West

Election result on Parliament's site

Parliamentary career

Career on Parliament's site

Published contact details

Only the details Parliament publishes for this member. Contact page on Parliament's site