Sarah Owen

Sarah Owen is a British Labour Party politician and trade unionist. She has served as the MP for Luton North since 2019. Owen is British Chinese, making her the first Labour MP of East Asian descent, and the first female MP of Chinese descent.

Owen was born and raised in Hastings. Her mother's family is Chinese and lives in Malaysia.

Owen has worked in the public sector as a care worker for the NHS, a political assistant for Brighton and Hove City Council and a London Fire Brigade employee in the emergency planning department. Owen has also served as a political advisor to Alan Sugar and has worked on Labour's national small business policy.

In 2011, Owen was chosen as the Labour Party candidate for Hastings and Rye to contest the next general election. At the following 2015 general election, Owen finished in second place with 17,890 votes, which was 4,796 votes behind the elected Conservative Party candidate Amber Rudd.

Owen was formerly a political officer for the trade union GMB and is currently a member of Labour's National Executive Committee. She is Chair of Chinese for Labour.

In the 2019 general election, Owen was chosen by a panel drawn from Labour's National Executive Committee as the party's candidate for Luton North, rather than by the local membership, causing protests from some of them who felt that GMB had forced the candidate on them. Owen was elected with a vote tally of 23,496, which was a majority of 9,247 votes over the Conservative Party candidate.

Owen gave birth to a daughter in February 2020. She has previously experienced miscarriages, a topic she spoke about through her union's newsletter for baby loss awareness.