Yvette Cooper

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. He was also a government adviser on the Energy Advisory Panel. Her mother was a maths teacher.

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. 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.

Early career

Cooper began her career as an economic policy researcher for Shadow Chancellor John Smith in 1990, before spending time working in Arkansas for the Democratic Party presidential nominee Bill Clinton in 1992. Later that year, she became a policy advisor to Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Harriet Harman.

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

Member of Parliament

Cooper was selected to contest the safe Labour seat of Pontefract and Castleford at the 1997 general election, after Deputy Speaker Geoff 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. 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. 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 Housing and Planning Minister, based in the Department for Communities and Local Government from 2006.

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.

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".

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. In 2009, Cooper was appointed as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

Allegations over allowances

In May 2009, it was revealed that together with her husband Ed Balls they changed the designation of their second home three times in a 24-month period. Following a referral to the parliamentary sleaze watchdog, they were exonerated by John Lyon, the Standards Commissioner. He said that they had paid capital gains tax on their homes and were not motivated by profit. 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. 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.

Shadow Cabinet

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. 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. 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.

Shadow Home Secretary

As Shadow Home Secretary, Cooper shadowed Theresa May at the Home Office. She labelled the government's immigration vans urging illegal immigrant to go home a "divisive gimmick" in October 2013.

In 2013, she proposed a new national commissioner for domestic and sexual violence. She spoke at the Labour Party Conference in 2014 about the case regarding eastern Europeans who were mistreated by the migrant labour employers.

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:

2015 Labour leadership election

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 officially nominated by 59 MPs, 12 MEPs, 109 CLPs, two affiliated trade unions and one socialist society. 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. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown publicly endorsed Cooper as his first choice for leader, as did former Home Secretary Alan Johnson.

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.

Cooper finished in third place, securing 71,928 votes or 17.0% in the first round, compared to 59.5% for the winning candidate, Jeremy Corbyn.

Backbencher

After the 2015 Labour Party leadership election, Cooper returned to the backbenches, after nearly seventeen years on the frontbench. 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. She spoke about the issue at Labour's annual conference in 2016.

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. As chair, Cooper launched a national inquiry into public views on immigration, and after an emergency inquiry into the Dubs scheme for child refugees, criticised the government's decision to end the programme in February 2017.

Personal life

Cooper married Ed Balls on 10 January 1998 in Eastbourne. Her husband was the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and a candidate in the 2010 Labour Party leadership election. The couple have two daughters and one son. Cooper and Balls were the first married couple to serve together in the British cabinet. 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.