Yvette Cooper

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Biography

Yvette Cooper is the Minister for Housing and Planning, and has been the MP for Pontefract and Castleford since 1997. She read PPE at Balliol College, Oxford, went on to Harvard University as a Kennedy scholar and the London School of Economics where she took a masters degree in economics.

She worked as economic researcher for late John Smith, Policy Advisor to Bill Clinton Presidential Campaign, Policy Adviser to Labour Treasury Team, and was an economics columnist with The Independent newspaper.

She’s a member of the TGWU and GMB unions.

She is married to Ed Balls, an MP and key advisor to Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.

As Minister responsible for Planning, she will play a crucial role in determining whether new nuclear power stations are built.

Links to the nuclear industry

Yvette Cooper’s father is Tony Cooper, a Director of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and former chairman of the Nuclear Industry Association.