25 Facts About Rosie Cooper

Rosie Cooper was a Liberal and later Liberal Democrat member of the Liverpool City Council from 1973 until 1999, when she joined the Labour Party.

Rosie Cooper was born in Liverpool, the daughter of deaf parents.

Rosie Cooper became a project coordinator in 1999, before she left Littlewoods in 2001, when she was appointed director at the Merseyside Centre for the Deaf.

Rosie Cooper was a member of the Liverpool Health Authority and held the position of vice chair between 1994 and 1996.

Rosie Cooper has acted as a trustee of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation.

Rosie Cooper was elected, aged 22, to the Liverpool City Council as a Liberal councillor in 1973 and, in 1992, became the Lord Mayor of Liverpool.

Rosie Cooper fought her first Westminster campaign at the 1983 general election when she was selected to contest the Conservative-held seat of Liverpool Garston as a Liberal.

Rosie Cooper finished in third place, more than 14,000 votes behind the winner, Labour's Eddie Loyden.

At the by-election, Labour retained the seat with George Howarth gaining a comfortable margin of 6,724 votes; when Rosie Cooper contested the seat again a few months later at the 1987 general election she finished 21,098 votes behind Howarth.

From 1973 to 1996, Rosie Cooper was councillor for the Broadgreen ward.

From 1996 to 2000, Rosie Cooper represented the Allerton ward, before in 1999 she switched to the Labour Party, becoming a partymate to former general election opponents Loyden, Howarth and Kennedy, and stood in the Netherley ward in 2000, though she did not win and left the council that year.

Rosie Cooper contested the European Parliament elections in 2004 for Labour in the North West.

Rosie Cooper became the Labour Party's candidate from an all-female short list, in the constituency of West Lancashire at the 2005 general election, following the retirement of the sitting MP Colin Pickthall.

Rosie Cooper was first elected to the House of Commons at her fifth attempt and third party with a majority of 6,084.

Rosie Cooper made her maiden speech on 24 May 2005.

On 9 August 2006, The Daily Telegraph wrote that Rosie Cooper had written to the Prime Minister's office reporting the viewpoint of some of her constituents expressed to her, that they would be appalled if Baroness Thatcher were to be given a state funeral, as a leader more politically divisive than others of the late twentieth century.

Rosie Cooper is a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Health Select Committee.

In February 2013, Rosie Cooper voted against the second reading of the Marriage Act 2013.

On 26 October 2017, a 31-year-old man, Christopher Lythgoe, associated with the proscribed neo-Nazi terror group National Action, was charged with encouragement to murder Rosie Cooper, and was charged along with six other men with being members of a proscribed organisation, contrary to section 11 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

Rosie Cooper was re-elected at the 2019 general election with a reduced majority.

In 2020 Rosie Cooper called for the Nursing and Midwifery Council to be "replaced with a body which can instil confidence" after a nurse, who was found guilty of bullying, was only handed a 12-month suspension.

Rosie Cooper supported Lisa Nandy in the 2020 Labour Party leadership election.

In June 2021, Rosie Cooper introduced a Private members' bill which would give British Sign Language legal recognition and enhance its use in public services.

In September 2022, Rosie Cooper announced she accepted a new role as chair of Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust and would resign as MP for West Lancashire triggering a by-election.

Rosie Cooper would be the first woman MP to vacate a seat for an actual paid office under the Crown and the first MP to do so since 1981, when Warrington's Thomas Williams was appointed a circuit judge.