Yvette Cooper

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Yvette Cooper (born March 20, 1969) British politician. She is the Labour Member of Parliament for Pontefract and Castleford and is the Minister for Housing and Planning at the Department for Communities and Local Government.

Born in Inverness, her father is Derek Cooper the former general secretary of the trade union, the Engineers and Managers Association. She was educated at the Eggars Comprehensive School, Alton and the Alton College, before studying at Balliol College, Oxford where she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. She was awarded a Kennedy Scholarship in 1991 to Harvard University and finished her studies with a Master of Science in economics at the London School of Economics.

She began her career as an economics researcher to the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer John Smith MP in 1990 before becoming a domestic policy specialist, working in Arkansas, for the United States Democratic Party presidential candidate Bill Clinton in 1992. Later in the year she became a policy advisor to the new Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown MP and in 1994 found herself working as a research associate for the Centre for Economic Performance. In 1995 she became the economic correspondent with The Independent until her election to Westminster.

She was selected at a very late stage in April 1997 to contest the very safe Labour seat of Pontefract and Castleford at the 1997 General Election on the retirement of the Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons Geoff Lofthouse. She held the seat very comfortably with a majority of 25,725 and she has held the seat easily since. She spoke of her constituency's struggle with unemployment in her maiden speech on July 2, 1997.[1] Yvette Cooper rose rapidly in parliament, after two years on the Education and Employment Select Committee she became, in 1999, a member of the Tony Blair government as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Health, and in 2003 moved to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. After the 2005 General Election she was promoted within the same department to Minister of State, which has subsequently become the Department of Communities and Local Government.

She married Ed Balls in Eastbourne in 1998 and they have three children. He was elected to parliament at the 2005 General Election for the neighbouring constituency of Normanton and so, together, they form one of five sets of married couples in the Commons (Nicholas Winterton and Ann Winterton; Andrew Mackay and Julie Kirkbride; Peter Robinson and Iris Robinson; Alan Keen and Ann Keen - to this could be added Gordon Prentice and Bridget Prentice who entered the Commons as man and wife, but have been divorced for many years). When their second child was born, Cooper became the first serving minister to take maternity leave in 2001. She enjoys swimming and portrait painting.