Yvette Cooper

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Right Honourable

Yvette Cooper

MP
Official portrait of Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP crop 2.jpg
Official portrait, 2019
Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee
Assumed office
19 October 2016
Preceded byTim Loughton (acting)
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
In office
5 June 2009 – 11 May 2010
Prime MinisterGordon Brown
Preceded byJames Purnell
Succeeded byIain Duncan Smith
Chief Secretary to the Treasury
In office
24 January 2008 – 5 June 2009
Prime MinisterGordon Brown
Preceded byAndy Burnham
Succeeded byLiam Byrne
Minister of State for Housing and Planning
In office
10 May 2005 – 24 January 2008
Prime MinisterTony Blair
Gordon Brown
Preceded byKeith Hill
Succeeded byCaroline Flint
Shadow Cabinet posts
2010–15
Shadow Home Secretary
In office
20 January 2011 – 12 September 2015
LeaderEd Miliband
Harriet Harman (acting)
Preceded byEd Balls
Succeeded byAndy Burnham
Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
In office
8 October 2010 – 20 January 2011
LeaderEd Miliband
Preceded byDavid Miliband
Succeeded byDouglas Alexander
Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities
In office
11 May 2010 – 7 October 2013
LeaderHarriet Harman (acting)
Ed Miliband
Preceded byTheresa May
Succeeded byGloria De Piero
Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
In office
11 May 2010 – 8 October 2010
LeaderHarriet Harman (acting)
Preceded byTheresa May
Succeeded byDouglas Alexander
Ministerial offices
1999–2005
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Regeneration and Regional Development
In office
13 June 2003 – 10 May 2005
Prime MinisterTony Blair
Preceded byChris Leslie
Succeeded byThe Baroness Andrews
Parliamentary Secretary to the Lord Chancellor's Department
In office
29 May 2002 – 12 June 2003
Prime MinisterTony Blair
Preceded byMichael Wills
Succeeded byOffice abolished
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health
In office
11 October 1999 – 28 May 2002
Prime MinisterTony Blair
Preceded byTessa Jowell
Succeeded byDavid Lammy
Member of Parliament
for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford
Pontefract and Castleford (1997–2010)
Assumed office
1 May 1997
Preceded byGeoffrey Lofthouse
Majority1,276 (2.6%)
Personal details
Born (1969-03-20) 20 March 1969 (age 52)
Inverness, Scotland
NationalityBritish
Political partyLabour
Spouse(s)
Ed Balls
​
(m. 1998)​
Children3
ParentsTony Cooper (father)
Alma materBalliol College, Oxford
Harvard University
London School of Economics
WebsiteOfficial website

Yvette Cooper (born 20 March 1969) is a British politician serving as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, previously Pontefract and Castleford, since 1997. A member of the Labour Party, Cooper served as the Shadow Foreign Secretary from 2010 to 2011 and Shadow Home Secretary from 2011 to 2015.

Cooper was Minister of State for Housing and Planning under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

She served in the Cabinet between 2008 and 2010 under Prime Minister Gordon Brown as Chief Secretary to the Treasury and then as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. After Labour lost the 2010 general election, Cooper served in Ed Miliband's Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from 2010 to 2011. In 2011, her husband Ed Balls was promoted to Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer; Cooper replaced Balls as Shadow Home Secretary and served until Labour lost the 2015 general election.

On 13 May 2015, Cooper announced she would run to be Leader of the Labour Party in the leadership election following the resignation of Miliband.[1] Cooper came third with 17.0% of the vote in the first round, losing to Jeremy Corbyn.[2] Cooper subsequently resigned as Shadow Home Secretary in September 2015. In October 2016, Cooper was elected chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee.[3]

Early life and education[]

Cooper was born on 20 March 1969 in Inverness, Scotland. Her father is Tony Cooper, former General Secretary of the Prospect trade union, a former non-executive director of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and a former Chairman of the British Nuclear Industry Forum.[4] He was also a government adviser on the Energy Advisory Panel.[5] Her mother, June, was a maths teacher.[6]

She was educated at Eggar's School, a comprehensive school in Holybourne, and Alton College, both in Alton, Hampshire. She read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford, and graduated with a first-class honours degree.[7] She won a Kennedy Scholarship in 1991 to study at Harvard University, and she completed her postgraduate studies with an MSc in Economics at the London School of Economics.[8]

Early career[]

Cooper began her career as an economic policy researcher for Shadow Chancellor John Smith in 1990 before working in Arkansas for Bill Clinton, nominee of the Democratic Party for President of the United States, in 1992. Later that year, she became a policy advisor to then Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Harriet Harman.[7]

At the age of 24, Cooper developed chronic fatigue syndrome, which took her a year to recover from.[6] In 1994 she moved to become a research associate at the Centre for Economic Performance. In 1995, she became the chief economics correspondent of The Independent, remaining with the newspaper until her election to the House of Commons in 1997.[7]

Member of Parliament[]

Cooper was selected to contest the safe Labour seat of Pontefract and Castleford at the 1997 general election, after Deputy Speaker Geoffrey Lofthouse announced his retirement. She retained the seat for Labour with a majority of 25,725 votes, and made her maiden speech in the Commons on 2 July 1997, speaking about her constituency's struggle with unemployment.[9] She served for two years on the Education and Employment Select committee.

In government[]

In 1999, she was promoted as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Health. As a health minister, Cooper helped implement the Sure Start programme.[10] In 2003, she became Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regeneration in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. After the 2005 general election she was promoted to Minister, as Minister of State for Housing and Planning based in the Department for Communities and Local Government from 2006.[11]

After Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, Cooper was invited to attend cabinet meetings as Housing Minister. Shortly after taking the job, she was required to introduce the HIPS scheme. According to Conservative columnist Matthew Parris, Cooper conceived HIPS but avoided direct criticism for its problems because of her connection with Brown.[12]

Cooper as Minister for Housing in 2007

The Labour government under Brown had identified affordable housing as one of its core objectives. In July 2007, Cooper announced in the House of Commons that "unless we act now, by 2026 first-time buyers will find average house prices are ten times their salary. That could lead to real social inequality and injustice. Every part of the country needs more affordable homes – in the North and the South, in urban and rural communities".[13]

In 2008, Cooper became the first woman to serve as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. As her husband, Ed Balls, was already a cabinet minister, her promotion meant that the two became the first married couple ever to sit in the cabinet together.[14]

In 2009, Cooper was appointed as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and took over leading on the Welfare Reform Act 2009 which included measures to extend the use of benefit sanctions to force unemployed people to seek work.[15] Many campaigners – including the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) – urged Cooper to rethink Labour's approach, arguing instead that increasing support for job seekers was vital to eradicating child poverty.[16][17]

Allegations over expenses[]

Main article: United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal

In May 2009, the Daily Telegraph reported that Cooper had changed the designation of her second home twice in two years. Following a referral to the parliamentary standards watchdog, Cooper and her husband Ed Balls were exonerated by John Lyon, the Standards Commissioner. He said they had paid capital gains tax on their homes and were not motivated by profit.[18] Cooper and Balls bought a four-bedroom house in Stoke Newington, North London, and registered this as their second home (rather than their home in Castleford, West Yorkshire); this qualified them for up to £44,000 a year to subsidise a reported £438,000 mortgage under the Commons Additional Costs Allowance, of which they claimed £24,400.[19] An investigation in MPs' expenses by Sir Thomas Legg found that Cooper and her husband had both received overpayments of £1,363 in relation to their mortgage. He ordered them to repay the money.[20]

Shadow Cabinet[]

Main article: Shadow Cabinet of Ed Miliband

After Labour were defeated at the 2010 general election, Cooper and her husband Ed Balls were both mentioned in the press as a potential leadership candidates when Gordon Brown resigned as Leader of the Labour Party.

Before Balls announced his candidacy, he offered to stand aside if Cooper wanted to stand, but Cooper declined for the sake of their children, stating that it would not be the right time for her.[21][22] She later topped the 2010 ballot for places in the Shadow Cabinet, and there was speculation that the newly elected Labour Leader Ed Miliband would appoint her Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.[23][24] She instead became Shadow Foreign Secretary.

When Alan Johnson resigned as Shadow Chancellor on 20 January 2011, Cooper was appointed Shadow Home Secretary. Her husband, Ed Balls, replaced Johnson as Shadow Chancellor. Cooper also served as Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities from October 2010 to October 2013.[11]

Shadow Home Secretary[]

On 20 January 2011, she took the position of Shadow Home Secretary amidst a shadow cabinet reshuffle.[25] In this position, Cooper shadowed Theresa May at the Home Office. She labelled the government's vans displaying posters urging illegal immigrants to go home a "divisive gimmick" in October 2013.[26]

In February 2013, she was assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4, although not in the top 20.[27]

In 2013, she proposed the appointment of a national commissioner for domestic and sexual violence.[28] She spoke at the Labour Party Conference in 2014 about eastern Europeans who were mistreated by employers of migrant labour.[29]

Cooper was strongly critical of the cuts to child tax credit announced by George Osborne in the July 2015 Budget; she authored the following statement in the New Statesman:

And remember David Cameron's pre-election pledge that child tax credit is "not going to fall." It was a lie. This is a shameful betrayal of parents working hard to support their kids and get on in life. In the twenty-first century working parents shouldn't have to go to food banks to put a hot meal on the table, as too many families now do.[30]

2015 Labour leadership election[]

Main article: 2015 Labour Party leadership election (UK)
Cooper speaking at the 2016 Labour Party Conference

In 2015, she was nominated as one of four candidates for the Labour leadership following the party's defeat at the 2015 general election and the resignation of Ed Miliband. Cooper was nominated by 59 MPs, 12 MEPs, 109 CLPs, two affiliated trade unions and one socialist society.[31][32][33] The Guardian newspaper endorsed Cooper as the "best placed" to offer a strong vision and unite the party while the New Statesman's endorsement praised her experience.[34][35] Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown publicly endorsed Cooper as his first choice for leader, as did former Home Secretary Alan Johnson.[36][37]

During the campaign, Cooper supported reintroducing the 50p income tax rate and creating more high-skilled manufacturing jobs. She proposed the introduction of a living wage for social care workers and the construction of 300,000 houses every year. Cooper disagreed that Labour spent too much whilst in government.[38]

Candidate[39] Party members Registered supporters Affiliated supporters Total[2]
Votes % Votes % Votes % Votes %
Jeremy Corbyn Green tickY 121,751 49.6 88,449 83.8 41,217 57.6 251,417
59.5
Andy Burnham 55,698 22.7 6,160 5.8 18,604 26.0 80,462
19.0
Yvette Cooper 54,470 22.2 8,415 8.0 9,043 12.6 71,928
17.0
Liz Kendall 13,601 5.5 2,574 2.4 2,682 3.8 18,857
4.5

Backbencher[]

Following the 2015 Labour Party leadership election, Cooper returned to the backbenches, after nearly seventeen years on the frontbench.[40] Building on her existing work on the European refugee crisis, Cooper was appointed chair of Labour's refugee taskforce, working with local authorities, community groups and trade unions to develop a sustainable and humanitarian response to the crisis.[41][42] She spoke about the issue at Labour's annual conference in 2016.[43]

She supported Owen Smith against Jeremy Corbyn in the 2016 leadership election.[44]

After a vote of MPs on 19 October 2016, Cooper was elected chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, gaining more votes than fellow candidates, Caroline Flint, Chuka Umunna and Paul Flynn.[3] As chair, Cooper launched a national inquiry into public views on immigration[45] and, after an emergency inquiry into the Dubs scheme for child refugees, criticised the government's decision to end the programme in February 2017.[46][47]

Cooper has been critical of the May Government's infrastructure plans' focus on big cities and has been the chair of , a group of Labour MPs, councillors and mayors of towns seeking to promote investment in them – publishing a town manifesto in 2019.[48][49] She said the following in regard to the launch of the group:[48][better source needed]

Towns are the backbone of Britain but our towns aren't getting a fair deal. In the slowest economic recovery in modern times, towns are seeing their jobs and businesses grow at only around half the rate of cities under the Tories. There is a very real and widening economic gap which isn’t good for the country. And Tory policies are making it worse – as key services have been lost from towns altogether under austerity. Towns don’t want to be patronised, we want a fair deal. That's why councillors, MPs and party members have set up Labour Towns to champion our towns and expose the damage the Tories are doing. Britain needs both our towns and our cities to prosper – the growing economic gap is bad for all of us.

She is a member of Labour Friends of Israel.[50]

Brexit[]

Main article: European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2019

During the Brexit process, Cooper consistently fought against a no-deal Brexit, tabling one of the main amendments in January 2019 in the same manner as Caroline Spelman, Graham Brady, Rachael Reeves, Dominic Grieve and Ian Blackford.[51]

In April, Cooper tabled a private members' bill, again with the intended effect of preventing a "no-deal" Brexit.[52] The Bill was voted to be discussed as an important bill using processes often used for issues of national security. MP's voted 312 to 311 in favour of allowing her bill to be fast tracked and it was made law on 8 April 2019.[citation needed]

Personal life[]

Cooper married Ed Balls on 10 January 1998[53] in Eastbourne. Her husband was Economic Secretary to the Treasury in the Tony Blair government and Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families under Gordon Brown, then in opposition was Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and a candidate in the 2010 Labour Party leadership election. The couple have two daughters (Ellie and Maddie) and one son (Joel).[54]

Cooper has published two books entitled 'She Speaks: The power of Women's voices' and 'She Speaks: Women's Speeches That Changed the World, from Pankhurst to Greta' released in November 2019 and October 2020 respectively. [55][56]

References[]

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  56. ^ "She Speaks: Power of Women's voices by Yvette Cooper". Booktopia.

External links[]

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Geoffrey Lofthouse 		Member of Parliament
for Pontefract and Castleford
1997–2010 		Constituency abolished
New constituency Member of Parliament
for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford
2010–present 		Incumbent
Political offices
Preceded by
Keith Hill 		Minister of State for Housing and Planning
2005–2008 		Succeeded by
Caroline Flint
Preceded by
Andy Burnham 		Chief Secretary to the Treasury
2008–2009 		Succeeded by
Liam Byrne
Preceded by
James Purnell 		Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
2009–2010 		Succeeded by
Iain Duncan Smith
Preceded by
Theresa May 		Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
2010 		Succeeded by
Douglas Alexander
Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities
2010–2013 		Succeeded by
Gloria De Piero
Preceded by
David Miliband 		Shadow Foreign Secretary
2010–2011 		Succeeded by
Douglas Alexander
Preceded by
Ed Balls 		Shadow Home Secretary
2011–2015 		Succeeded by
Andy Burnham
Retrieved from ""