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
Bryan Cooper (politician) Bryan Cooper (politician) Bryan Ricco Cooper (17 June 1884 – 5 July 1930) was an Irish politician, writer and landowner from Markree Castle, County Sligo. He was prominent in Dáil Éireann in the early years of the Irish Free State, having previously served as MP to Westminster for South Dublin County (1910), a seat he subsequently represented in the Dáil from 1923 to 1930. The Cooper family, Protestant landlords, had been involved in politics in Sligo since long before the 1800 Act of Union (which Joshua Cooper, a Privy Councillor at the time, strongly opposed). Bryan Cooper's father, Francis, was