Troubling issues clatter onto Yvette Cooper’s desk

“Whichever cupboard you open, you know all sorts of terrible things that have been crammed in there for years will fall out.” That’s how a long-serving former Home Office minister describes working in the department.

And for Home Secretary Yvette Cooper – who joins us on Sunday’s show – a number of tricky and emotive issues have landed with a thump on her desk. The grooming gangs scandal. The obvious failures of the authorities in the Southport murders. This week, a new row with police forces who warn they’ll have to make cuts despite some extra funding.

Cooper’s successes or failures really do affect every one of our lives. She is responsible for the safety of our streets, handling threats we face from terrorists, and policing the border.

Just how big is the job she’s facing – and how is she faring so far?

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Like all cabinet ministers, Cooper and her team are conscious of the ticking clock. The new government isn’t so new anymore. She has complicated problems to solve that can’t be fixed in a hurry, and Labour wants to be able to demonstrate the difference to voters as soon as possible.

Her job is “simply vast”, says one insider – and the challenges facing Cooper are fast evolving, whether that’s dangerous Channel crossings by migrants who want to make a life in the UK in numbers unimaginable 10 years ago, a huge rise in fraud, or the ways in which predators are using rapidly advancing technology to help them with their crimes in the most hideous ways.

New figures from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) shared with us this weekend show how rapidly that challenge is growing and changing. The IWF, a charity with unique powers to hunt down and remove child abuse imagery and material, has told us that the use of artificial intelligence to create illegal content depicting children is growing at an alarming rate.

According to its analysts, reports of AI-generated child sexual abuse have risen by 380% in the last 12 months. In 2024, there were 245 reports, compared to 51 in 2023. Of those, the IWF says 193 involved imagery that was so realistic it had to be treated the same as if it had been real images of children being abused.

The home secretary has already promised new laws in the coming weeks to try to crack down on this problem. And it’s one of the issues we’ll talk about when she joins us in the studio.

Cooper has a reputation in government as being a proper expert in her brief, having studied every nook and cranny of the department as chair of the Home Affairs Committee and as shadow home secretary. A source describes her as “methodical and very thorough”. But the list of jobs on her list is dizzying.

One senior Whitehall figure describes her department as having “low morale and struggling to deliver”.

How can she tackle record levels of shoplifting, with brazen, kamikaze-style attacks being carried out on retailers? What about trying to “smash the gangs” – Labour’s answer to its predecessors’ vow to “stop the boats”?

We pressed Cooper on these plans when we spoke to her in Rome just before Christmas, and laws introducing anti-terror-style offences to help combat people smuggling arrived in Parliament this week. But she has always been reluctant to give the public a timetable on when she’ll have been able to make a difference.

There is little sign of a deal to get France to take migrants back – often seen as the measure that could make the biggest difference.

The government is being attacked from the right for ditching the Conservatives’ plans to send migrants to Rwanda, as well as some other planned measures like age tests for those who arrive. From the left, it is criticised for maintaining some of the former government’s plans, like banning migrants from claiming protection under modern slavery laws.

What about Labour’s promise to halve violence against women and girls? On Friday, a report from the National Audit Office made pretty embarrassing reading for the department, saying despite successive attempts to set a direction, the Home Office doesn’t fully understand the problem and hasn’t made a convincing difference.

The Home Office does not instinctively like headlines. And Cooper is not a politician who seeks attention, content to be seen as a “quiet doer”, as a source describes her.

But the stakes are so high. Whether they like it or not, the responsibility to answer for failures, or respond to moments of national distress, so often falls to them.

A former long-serving minister in the department says: “You always hesitate before looking at the front pages – at some point, somebody, somewhere might do something that could end your career”.

Cooper’s rivals in opposition say “she’s been making big mistakes” in the first weeks of this year.

They suggest she didn’t respond quickly enough to calls for a national inquiry into the grooming gangs. She initially refused a national investigation then, as political pressure built, announced a “national audit” and local inquiries. The move appeared to follow a classic Whitehall habit: if in doubt, call for straight-talking troubleshooter Baroness Louise Casey to do the work.

Rivals say “it’s ridiculous” to imagine Cooper’s plans to “smash the gangs” will make much difference to the number of Channel crossings. But Home Office sources say this January had the lowest number of small boat arrivals of any January since 2021, at 1098, despite having twice the number of days with weather conditions less treacherous for crossings.

Even so, the overall task facing the Home Office is enormous, with no less than the safety and protection of the country and the public in the Cooper’s hands.

A former home secretary said, “it’s not the ministry of fun, but it is doable”.

With so much riding on her progress, Labour had better hope they’re right.

Top picture credit: Getty Images

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