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Dame Chinyelu Susan " Chi" Onwurah (; born 12 April 1965) is a British politician who has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West since 2024, and previously for Newcastle upon Tyne Central from 2010 to 2024, when the constituency was abolished. She is a member of the Labour Party.
Onwurah was the shadow minister for Industrial Strategy, Science and Innovation under Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn from October 2016 until April 2020, when she was appointed shadow minister for Science, Research and Digital by Keir Starmer.
Onwurah was born on 12 April 1965 in Wallsend, then in Northumberland. While she was still in her infancy the family moved to Awka, Nigeria in 1965. Just two years later the Biafra War broke out, bringing famine with it, forcing her mother to bring the children back to Tyneside, while her father stayed there in the Biafran army.
Onwurah attended Kenton School in Newcastle and graduated from Imperial College London in 1987 with a degree in electrical engineering. She worked in hardware and software development, product management, market development and strategy for a variety of mainly private sector companies in a number of different countries – the UK, France, the United States, Nigeria and Denmark – while studying for an MBA at Manchester Business School.
Prior to entering Parliament, Onwurah was Head of Telecoms Technology at Ofcom, with a focus on broadband provision.
Onwurah supported Ed Miliband in the 2010 Labour Party leadership election.Onwurah,
Chi, [http://www.chionwurahmp.com/component/content/article/1-website/15-why-im-supporting-ed-milliband.html "Why I'm supporting Ed Miliband"], 27 July 2010. , 27 July 2010.
Miliband appointed Onwurah as a junior shadow minister for Business, Innovation and Skills on 10 October 2010.
In January 2013, Onwurah was given a new "wide-ranging role" as a Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, focusing on "cyber security, social entrepreneurship and open government." Departing from the post in September 2015, she was succeeded by Louise Haigh.
On 11 September 2024 she was appointed Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee.
"Before entering Parliament, I spent two decades as a professional engineer, working across three continents. Regardless of where I was or the size of the company, it was always a predominantly male, or indeed all-male, environment, but it is only when I walk into a toy shop that I feel I am really experiencing gender segregation." Hansard (5 February 2014). House of Commons debate: 'Children's Toys (Gender–specific Marketing)', col. 138WH. Retrieved 29 November 2014.She later told Kira Cochrane of The Guardian that she believes the limiting of children by gender stereotypes is a serious economic issue, with the proportion of female students on engineering degree courses having fallen from 12% to 8% in the thirty years since she had started studying for one herself. Referring to a shortage of engineers and the UK having "the lowest proportion in Europe of women who are professional engineers", she said "toys are so important and formative, and for me this is about the jobs of the future, about what happens in 10 or 15 years' time. We can't go on with a segregated society."
Moral issues
Onwurah’s mother was a member of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, and she had assumed that when given the opportunity, she would vote in favour of voluntary assisted dying. But in November 2024, she wrote to constituents to say she would be opposing Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill allowing terminally ill adults to end their lives, saying she was concerned that the bill was "flawed" and there had been insufficient time for parliamentary scrutiny.
After Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership election of the Labour party in September 2015, Onwurah was made a Shadow Minister for Business, Innovation and Skills, as well as a Shadow Minister for Culture, Media and Sport.
Onwurah noted that the confusion affected two of the ethnic minority, female MPs (out of a 5% total), and argued that employment law required private sector managers to be considerably more sensitive and responsive in handling comparable situations. She stated: "If this had been any of my previous employers in the public and private sectors, Jeremy might well have found himself before an industrial tribunal for constructive dismissal, probably with racial discrimination thrown in". Onwurah later wrote that "I made no accusation of racism against Jeremy", after claims had been made of her "playing the race card".
She was re-elected at the 2019 general election, and again, Newcastle Upon Tyne Central was the first seat in the United Kingdom to be declared. Her share of the vote fell to 57.6%, representing a majority of 12,278 votes with a swing of just under 4% to the Conservative Party.
In 2020 she was made an Honorary Fellow of the British Science Association.
Onwurah was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2025 Birthday Honours for Political and Public Service.
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