Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Yvette Cooper (born 20 March 1969) is a British Labour politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Pontefract and Castleford since 1997 and has served in the Cabinet since 2008, firstly as the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and from 2009 as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. She was selected at a very late stage in April 1997 to contest the very safe Labour seat of Pontefract and Castleford at the 1997 General Election on the retirement of the Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons Geoff Lofthouse. She held the seat very comfortably with a majority of 25,725 and she has held the seat easily since. She spoke of her constituency''s struggle with unemployment in her maiden speech on 2 July 1997.