Cowper’s Cut 438: Yvette Cooper is the new Secretary Of State For Health But Social Care

Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley Labour MP Yvette Cooper has been moved from Home Secretary (one of the Four Great Offices Of State) to be appointed as the new Secretary Of State For Health But Social Care.

She replaces Young Master Wesley Streeting’s replacement, clean young man James Murray (who, as he arrived in post on 14 May, avoids becoming the shortest-lived Health Secretary of all time: an accolade still held by antibiotic-sharer Dr Therese Coffey, under the memorable administration of Liz Of The Forty-Nine Days Truss).

I was correct about Mr Murray’s fate: in the last ‘Cut’, I observed that his retention “doesn’t feel likely”. Good luck to James Murray with his next endeavours: he did nothing wrong, and asked some sensible questions.

As for Young Master Wesley, I was equally right to observe that Mr Streeting was “The Man Who Will Not Be Andy Burnham’s Chancellor”. And health’s gain is defence’s loss, with Mr Streeting being appointed as the new Defence Secretary. Former Defence Secretary and now Chancellor John Healey will probably keep a watchful eye on the Young Master. It’ll be entertaining to see how many weeks Mr Streeting holds out before his first blatant briefing against the Chancellor or PM.

But I did not correctly predict that the new SOS would be Yvette Cooper: so my congratulations to those who did.

The pros and cons of Cooper

Yvette Cooper’s advantage is that she has plenty of Cabinet experience, including a stint as chief secretary to the Treasury. She was a junior health minister 1999-2002, during the first Blair government, and so mostly under Alan Milburn as Health Secretary. It will be telling to see if Mr Milburn stays in post as lead non-executive director of the Department For Health But Social Care.

It would be fair to say that views about Ms Cooper from Labour and Westminster circles vary widely.

I heard more than one observation that Ms Cooper very much follows her brief from her civil servants, as opposed to challenging it. This makes the calibre of the civil servants who will feed Ms Cooper highly significant: equally, their ability to explain the current context and conflicts of the English NHS.

Because it is not as if things are going swimmingly.

The NHS Ten-Year Plan is not a plan; the triple shift (treatment to prevention; hospital to neighbourhood; analogue to digital) has not been incentivised, and so is largely not happening; there is no credible plan nor trajectory to stop the recent rises of the RTT waiting list and get things on a trajectory to meet Labour’s 2024 manifesto commitment to achieving 95% 18-week RTT by 2029.

Then there is the huge and unresolved tension between the centralisation of power under the NHS Modernisation Bill currently at Report Stage and the Burnham plans for greater devolution of power to local or regional democratic control.

Health and care quality and safety regulation and improvement systems are notable by their absence.

Oh, and there is the not-small matter of the maternity scandals and inquiries.

That is before we even get to Mr Burnham’s pledge of the reform of social care, to fund and provide it on a more NHS-type universal basis.

It’s quite the briefing for civil servants to give Ms Cooper. But if they are not candid about where things are, then the opportunity for a much-needed ‘circuit breaker’ to develop some plans that may actually work will be missed.

The excellent Isabel Hardman outlines this process/procedural tendency of Cooper’s in her Spectator piece. Isabel also observes that former Health Secretary and now PM Andy Burnham may have lots of his own ideas for health and care reform, and so wants an implementer. That would make Cooper a good choice.

‘Yes, but what’s she like?’

Views that I’ve canvassed or received so far about Ms Cooper’s character and contribution diverge widely. Some of them inevitably come from Labour sources - and the internal harmony, tolerance and Catholicism of difference within Labour is always a beautiful thing to behold. (“Judean People’s Front? We’re The People’s Front Of Judea!”)

One contact in Labourland suggests that she is “an indecisive bully”: very much the worst of both worlds. “A passive-aggressive hoarder of power” is another ringing description, and one that doesn’t sound very devo-friendly.

I was rather taken by the line of one sharp observer that “she has about as much reforming zeal as my dog has enthusiasm for picking up his own shit”.

So, she’s certainly not universally popular. Still, at least democratic politics isn’t a popularity contest … oh, hang on.

For balance, there were some more pro-YC thoughts: “I was once briefing ministers when (Alan) Milburn was Secretary of State. I was about to cut across the young confident woman, who was talking very assertively about something about which she was wrong. ‘Who is this SpAd?’ I thought … then I realised that she was the minister. I think she was 29 at the time.”

Another observation was that “as a local MP, she has always been brilliantly-briefed, fierce as fuck, and absolutely fair. She takes political positions when she has to, but tells you so (mostly). She was also Chief Secretary to the Treasury early on in her career … I admire her, but don’t particularly like her.”

And more neutrally, “I recall being summoned to see her in Richmond House (the former London HQ of the Department Of Health) in 2002 when she was a junior minister, because our winter plan didn’t pass muster. It was like being grilled by an intelligent sixth-former.”

Yvette Cooper (like Andy Burnham) stood for the Labour leadership back in 2015, when Jeremy Corbyn won decisively. There was a widely-shared joke from that time, of which several contacts reminded me: Yvette Cooper is asked if she’d like a tea or coffee, and replies “both have their merits”.

The return of former care worker and parent to a disabled child Angela Rayner to the Department For Communities, Local Government And Housing is interesting, and I would not be astonished (once Louise Casey has reported later this year) to see social care moved into that department, where there are probably some more logical fits for a preventative style of social care, as discussed by Mr Burnham.

There would certainly be a welcome reduction in the likelihood of social care being ‘NHS-ified’.

So, we may yet see a Department For Communities, Local Government, Housing And Social Care. Or DCLGHSC. Bless you!

Recommended and required reading

The Guardian reports that during 2025-26 a total of 1,669 midwives aged 34 or under left their jobs in the English NHS – more than half (57%) of the 2,949 midwives of all ages who resigned. Of last year’s 1,669 younger leavers, 205 were under 25; 655 were between 25 and 29; and the other 809 were between 30 and 34: the data was compiled from parliamentary questions tabled by the Liberal Democrats.