Sarah Coombes.

A steady party-line MP who has made road safety her most distinctive public cause, Sarah Coombes introduced a private member's bill on "ghost plates" — fake or obscured number plates used to evade detection — and has sustained that campaign since early 2025, drawing BBC coverage and working alongside the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner to press for legislative change. Locally, she has championed a West Bromwich supported accommodation scheme and engaged directly with manufacturers on tariff concerns. She has not rebelled against Labour once in her time in Parliament.

At 81% voting participation, Coombes sits a little below the Commons average, though that figure is broadly typical for newer MPs managing constituency and chamber demands. Her 133 contributions across 99 debates since 2024 show a reasonably active speaking record, concentrated on economy and jobs, crime, local government, and transport — topics that map closely onto West Bromwich's industrial character and her ghost-plates campaign. She votes with the government on immigration, planning reform, and fiscal matters without deviation, and her stance profile shows strong alignment with progressive taxation and workers' rights.

The one area where she diverges meaningfully from her parliamentary Labour colleagues is assisted dying: her voting pattern sits around 31 percentage points above the party average in favour of access, suggesting a notably more permissive personal position on that issue than most Labour MPs. She holds no committee seats, which limits her formal scrutiny role. News sentiment data for the most recent 90 days covers only three articles, so the picture of her current local profile is thinner than the longer-term record; the ghost-plates issue remains the clearest signal of where she has chosen to focus independent energy.