Yahoo News General Election 2024: Labour's Melanie Onn on her priorities if elected for Grimsby and Cleethorpes
Support for residents with cost of living and growing local industry are among Labour party candidate Melanie Onn's priorities if elected as Grimsby and Cleethorpes' MP.
In the run-up to polling day, Grimsby Live is speaking to Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes candidates, putting to them set questions, mostly prompted by reader feedback, to find out their priorities and stances. There are seven candidates standing in the constituency.
For the first time at a general election, Grimsby and Cleethorpes are together in one constituency with the exception of the Scartho ward, which is in Brigg and Immingham.
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Melanie Onn is the Labour candidate in Grimsby and Cleethorpes. She was Grimsby's MP between 2015 and 2019. Before her time in Parliament, previous roles included for public sector union UNISON and within the Labour party. Between 2020 and 2023, she was the deputy chief executive of RenewableUK, the UK's leading not-for-profit renewable energy trading association.
What will be your priorities for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes, if elected?
"We’ve got to support residents through the cost of living crisis. While that might not be as intense for people at the moment, particularly in terms of their energy costs, it is likely to come back again as the weather gets colder later on in the year. Making sure that people have got access to the support they need through that absolutely is a priority.
"Banging the drum for our town centres. It’s been raised with me so much on the doorstep about the state of the town centre, the slowness with which the developments are taking place, the sense of a waste of money. I really want to get that up and running, and backing small business so that we do have areas in the town centre that people feel safe and comfortable and enjoy spending time in.
"We’ve got to protect Grimsby Hospital and get the NHS back on its feet. I’m meeting too many people who are waiting too long for all kinds of different treatments. We are seeing a loss of services, the closure of the Laurel Ward, the only women-specific gynaecological ward that we had in Grimsby Hospital." She added: "We need to make sure we’ve got services people are able to access in our local area."
Tackling violent crime and anti-social behaviour was another priority, said Ms Onn, who added the level of violent crime seemed to be increasing. To address crime and anti-social behaviour would involve working closely with the police, preventative measures at grassroots level, and "making sure that sentencing fits the crime," she said.
"Growing our local industry" was another priority. "I have been working in industry for the last five years since I left Parliament. It is clearer to me than ever that we have to have support to make sure we have got thriving industries that offer long-term career options and pathways into those industries." This included supporting local talent to "know they can have careers here in the community, they don’t need to leave and go elsewhere for that".
"And I will be campaigning to fix the A180. It’s not just about the bridges, it is about the surfacing as well, it’s the noisiest road in the country. It frustrates lots of drivers, I think it is a terrible welcome into the area. So let’s get on and get that resurfaced and fixed so that we can have a smooth ride."
Reader-prompted question: What are you prepared to do for struggling families and people on low income that cannot afford to feed their kids and pay bills?
"It’s an absolute tragedy that in a modern society so many people are finding themselves in this situation. The government, I feel, has turned a blind eye to these issues. The reality is we have got 700,000 more children who are considered to be in poverty, 4 million children living in homes that are on low incomes, and a million that have experienced destitution. The last Labour government managed to lift half a million children out of poverty, we’re absolutely determined to build on that record."
Labour would work on "an ambitious, new cross-government strategy to tackle child poverty" with communities, organisations and local government, "so we can put an end to the mass dependency on food banks and food parcels". It would also introduce free breakfast clubs at all primary schools, she said, adding evidence showed it improves learning.
"We will make work pay, we are going to reform Universal Credit to make it easier to move into work. We’ll be supporting an increased minimum wage that reflects the actual cost of living as well," she added as among the measures a Labour government would bring in, if elected.
Reader-prompted question: What will candidates do to further create jobs and opportunities in the area for people within the region to support current industries and the growing offshore wind turbine/renewables sector?
"It’s so important to our local area, and central to Labour’s manifesto. One of the major missions is to have an industrial strategy that incorporates much greener energy so that we do achieve international targets around net zero.
"For our local area, we know we’ve got the world’s largest operational and maintenance facility around the renewables sector. I think it’s still the case anywhere in the world, hopefully China have still not yet knocked us off that top spot.
"I don’t think we even recognise how important it is," she said, adding she met a Rhode Island delegation last week, who wanted to see how things were done here. "We are already world-leading in so many ways," she said, with 15 years' experience of construction of wind farms, and developing the operation and maintenance bases.
"Having GB Energy as one of the six first steps of a Labour government absolutely will kickstart the nation’s mission for clean power, leading to lower bills and boosting energy independence, all while delivering jobs for the future." She added she felt particularly well-placed due to her work in the renewables sector. This involved supporting industry to provide apprenticeships and working closer with local communities.
"It’s not all just about going out and fixing wind turbines, there are lots of job opportunities." She added about "encouraging those companies to divest some of their London-centric roles, whether those are accounting roles or human resources roles" to be placed closer to the jobs offered in the technical field.
Labour would introduce a National Wealth Fund, "an important tool to deliver growth across the whole of the country," including 650,000 jobs. This reflected well particularly with the growing local renewables sector, whether carbon capture interest, or companies like Myenergi "involved with all the adaptations to electric vehicles and monitoring of our home energy usage".
"We have got so much to shout about in this area and they reflect the kind of long-term good jobs that people can look forward to." She added technological advances, including in the region, are increasing the 35-year lifespan of wind farms.
Reader-prompted question: - What is your stance on immigration?
"We know that net migration needs to come down. We’ve had five successive Conservative prime ministers over the last 14 years that have all been saying we’re going to bring down net migration. Every single one of them has failed."
Ms Onn says a Labour government would make changes to the points-based immigration system to help reduce net migration and it would "end workplace exploitation, where we see migration used to undercut terms and conditions of workers here", adding: "That is not acceptable. We have to have effective and practical policies.
"I really think that around migration we’ve got to take the temperature out of the debate. It has been stoked up to such a height that you can barely say we need a credible system and we need a stable government to be able to deliver that. But that is the reality of what we are facing." There needed to be "a clear process" to tackle the main drivers of recruitment from abroad, and "to fire up skills training in this country rather than just relying solely on people from overseas".
On illegal migration, Ms Onn said: "Labour will be introducing Border Security Command, giving them access to terrorist powers so that they are able to more effectively liaise with international agencies and smash the criminal gangs which are driving people over to this country, with lots of false promises and stolen money."
The Conservatives had cut funding and staff from Home Office agencies, she claimed, whereas Labour would invest in the Home Office. Instead of asylum claims being processed within three months, "as they were in the last Labour government and returns happening at double the rate than they are now, people are stuck for 18 months, two years, in accommodation around the country". This was "not acceptable" for communities or people put in that position.
Reader-prompted question: Is criminalisation of wolf whistling a legal change you would like to see, and what are your crime issue priorities?
"Rooting out violence against women and girls is important to an incoming Labour government. But I’ve set out what my priorities for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes are."
Ms Onn reiterated a focus on anti-social behaviour and the level of violent crime, saying: "Having 13,000 new police officers on the streets under Labour plans absolutely will help to tackle that. But also, we know that in Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes, we have got high levels of domestic violence."
Measures to address this included domestic abuse experts in 999 call centres to be able to speak directly to, preventing anyone becoming a police officer with a history of violence against women and girls and making it easier for police forces to speed up the process on submitting cases against instances of domestic violence.
"This isn’t something we should make light of. Bringing it down to the point of the question I think negates the very real issue that affects lots of people."
Reader-prompted question: What will you push for on climate and the environment?
"Part of the climate crisis is about making sure our energy system is decarbonised as far as possible. Pushing for that obviously reflects the work I’ve been doing in recent years, so that’s absolutely something I want to continue. That will be within the framework of Labour’s ambition of making Britain a clean energy superpower.
"We do want to have much more secure energy, coming from independent resources that we can grow by investing in GB Energy and having a combination of things," she said, citing a variety of renewables. "All of that is great in terms of tackling the climate crisis," she said.
Some of the highest pollutants came from people's homes due to poor insulation. She wanted "a home insulation process that is actually easy to use, not a system that tries to discourage people from doing it," that supported people, and worked through local government to achieve.
On water pollution, Ms Onn said: "It’s something I’ve been campaigning on over the last few months, because it’s awful that Cleethorpes lost its Blue Flag status. It has an impact on whether or not people are prepared to come and use the water in a way they might want to. We’ve got businesses in that important blue economy that are having to restrict the kind of offer they can provide to tourists."
Ms Onn argued the Conservatives over the last 14 years had not taken the issue seriously. "We want to put water companies into special measures to end that sewage scandal, making sure that water bosses do face personal criminal liability for extreme and persistent law-breaking, so introducing a legal limit for the amount of discharges that can happen and making people personally responsible for that. Introducing severe and automatic fines for those illegal discharges, they cannot be ignored and making all companies monitor every single water outlet."
Some of this involved changes to regulator Ofwat, "making sure their priorities are not just on cost but also on quality and investment in infrastructure."
Reader-prompted question: What are candidates' plans for the sheer number of HMOs in Grimsby and the loss of family homes?
Ms Onn said it was "a big issue" in recent local elections, adding: "It was one of the local Labour candidate’s pledges to introduce more regulation on HMOs. There has been a massive failure in government to build the kind of homes that are needed. There is a recognition that we’ve got around two thousand empty properties across Grimsby and Cleethorpes that are not being dealt with at all. The housing emergency is getting worse under this government, whether you are dreaming of owning your home or you are looking for stability in the rental market."
The planning system was also not working and developers were not committing to S106 payments on social housing. Labour had a plan to build one-and-a-half million homes over the course of the next Parliament, "making sure we’ve got a boost to that affordable housing, giving dibs to first-time buyers in the local area".
"Tackling the empty homes, challenging and being more firm on the S106 and ending the S21 automatic evictions because that displaces families" were policies it would also pursue. She said more automatic restrictions have occurred since the Liz Truss mini-budget. "People find they have no other option than to sell and so are issuing those notices.
"Having stability in the rental market is part and parcel of that and allowing local authorities and local communities the powers to build the homes those communities need absolutely has to come first.
"HMOs do change the nature of a street, it can be quite disruptive, not always. And add quite a lot of pressure to what were family homes to local services as well."
