Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy.

Melanie Ward's most significant recent action was voting against the assisted dying bill at Third Reading on 20 June 2025 -- one of five rebel votes she cast that day as the bill advanced to the Lords. She voted down amendments designed to close a self-starvation loophole and opposed the bill's final Commons passage, while backing a procedural move to allow New Clause 16 to be considered and supporting an amendment protecting assessment continuity. Those five deviations make assisted dying the clearest point of distance between her and her party, and her deviation scores confirm it: she sits 20 percentage points above Labour's average on assisted dying safeguards and 22 points above on end-of-life autonomy.

Beyond that flash of independence, Ward is a 96.9% party-line voter who participates in 75% of divisions -- slightly below the Commons average. Her speeches, spread across 197 contributions in 132 debates, concentrate heavily on defence, the economy and jobs, and social care. She scores notably above Labour's norm on parliamentary scrutiny (33% vs the party's 6%), suggesting a recurrent willingness to push back on process even when she backs the underlying policy. On welfare, climate, and immigration she sits close to the Labour median, neither a consistent rebel nor a distinctive outlier.

Her local profile is active and largely positive. She drew coverage in January 2026 when she visited a Kirkcaldy mosque following a racist attack and publicly condemned the abuse despite receiving personal threats -- a story that generated significant local and national attention. She has also clashed with the SNP over a local planning decision she framed as favouring a developer over community interests. No committee roles are recorded. Her news coverage over the past 90 days skews positive, concentrated on constituency casework, community engagement, and education.