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
Joan Cooper parents' cottage in Hayfield, Derbyshire, which had been vacant since his mother's death in 1981. Joan Cooper lived there until her death from stomach cancer two years later at the age of 66. Joan Cooper Joan Cooper (23 August 1922 – 1 July 1989) was a British actress. Her husband was the actor Arthur Lowe whom she met at the Manchester Repertory Theatre in 1946. They were married at the Register Office, Strand, London, in January 1948. She had three children – Jane Gatehouse and David Gatehouse (children from a previous marriage) and Stephen Lowe (born 1953 at Hammersmith, London,