Britain's new Prime Minister Andy Burnham has appointed Yvette Cooper as health and social care secretary in his new cabinet, it has been announced.
She was previously foreign secretary, and has headed up the Home Office, and has also held the role of public health minister, when she was involved in the launch of the Sure Start programme. She has been MP for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley since 2024.
She takes over the health brief from James Murray, MP for Ealing North, who served as Health and Social Care Secretary from May to July. following the resignation of Wes Streeting.
In his first few hours as prime minister, Andy Burnham said that the change in leadership brings “a circuit breaker for Britain” that would “bringing forward the biggest changes in the last 40 years and promising a new political model and economic model.
As the seventh UK prime minister in 10 years, he said this was a moment for “reflection and new resolution”, and that the future should be “more about problem solving than point scoring”.
Burnham announced plans later this year for a new 10 year plan for Britain. Priorities will include helping more people into work and building more council homes – to help bring the welfare bill down.
“We will help people to live well; building a more preventative state,” he said.
“I will put the care of people at the heart of everything I do.”
Mr Burnham’s first “instruction” as Prime Minister, he said, was “to end rough sleeping in Britain”. Prior to his appointment he visited The Passage, a homelessness charity at St Vincent’s Centre in Victoria, London. Tackling homelessness was a target for Burnham in Manchester, where he was Mayor.
Burnham has made social care reform one of his priorities, to update a “broken” system, with broader integration of health and social care likely, alongside devolution.
During two years in power, Keir Starmer's government launched the 10 Year Health Plan for England in July 2025, focusing on the three shifts, from hospitals to community-based care, from sickness treatment to prevention and from analogue systems to digital healthcare. A central element of the plan is the creation of neighbourhood health centres, bringing services such as diagnostics, mental health care, rehabilitation and nursing care closer to patients' homes, expanded Community Diagnostic Centres, and the abolition of NHS England as a separate body.
Wes Streeting becomes secretary of state for defence in the the new cabinet, and Stephen Kinnock, previously minister of state for care and who had responsibility for pharmacy, is the new secretary of state for Wales.
