Yvette Cooper 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 and took over
Yvette Cooper the Labour Party Conference in 2014 about eastern Europeans who were mistreated by employers of migrant labour. 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": 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