Yvette Cooper

Did You Know?

• At age 24, Cooper developed chronic fatigue syndrome and took a year to recover.
• She began her career as an economic policy researcher for Shadow Chancellor John Smith in 1990.
• She worked in Arkansas for Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign.

Early life and education

Yvette Cooper was born in Inverness, Scotland, to father Tony Cooper, a trade union leader and former government adviser, and mother June, a maths teacher. She attended Eggar's School and Alton College in Hampshire before reading philosophy, politics and economics at Balliol College, Oxford, earning a first-class BA. She won a Kennedy Scholarship to Harvard University and later completed an MSc in economics at the London School of Economics.

Parliamentary career

Cooper was elected MP for Pontefract and Castleford in 1997 with 75.7% of the vote. After serving on the Education and Employment Select Committee, she became Parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Department of Health in 1999, where she helped implement Sure Start and became the first British government minister to take maternity leave. She was re-elected in 2001 and 2005 with reduced majorities. In 2003 she became Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regeneration, and after the 2005 election she was promoted to Minister of State for Housing and Planning. In 2008 she became the first woman to serve as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, involved in taking Northern Rock into public ownership. Her promotion alongside her husband Ed Balls made them the first married couple to sit in cabinet together. She later served as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2009 to 2010.

Political positions

Cooper has condemned Russia's actions in the Russo-Ukrainian war, describing it in 2025 as an illegal and unprovoked war of aggression against the UN charter. In November 2024 she criticised Vladimir Putin's threats to use weapons against nations whose weapons were used to attack Russia, calling his tone completely unacceptable. She campaigned to remain in the EU in the 2016 Brexit referendum, arguing that leave campaigners made a false promise over border controls. During the 2015 leadership election she called for a moral approach to the European migrant crisis and criticised David Cameron's government for failing to take diplomatic action with France. She later pressured Cameron to do more for Syrian refugees, arguing that if every city or county took ten families, Britain could help nearly 10,000 people. In 2020 she tabled an amendment to an immigration bill to allow unaccompanied child refugees to be reunited with relatives in the UK.

Personal life

Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls were married in Eastbourne in January 1998. Balls served as Economic Secretary to the Treasury and later as Children's Secretary, and was a Labour leadership candidate in 2010. The couple have three children. Cooper authored two books, She Speaks: The Power of Women's Voices and a follow-up volume. After Russia invaded Ukraine, she welcomed a Ukrainian family into her Castleford home.