The Health Secretary appeared on the ITV breakfast show to discuss mental health services.
Health secretary Yvette Copper appeared on the latest epiosde of Good Morning Britain (Image: ITV)
Good Morning Britain viewers accused the presenters of the ITV breakfast show of being “soft” on the health secretary Yvette Cooper, due to the fact her husband, Ed Balls, works on the programme. He was not present for the chat on Thursday, August 6; the Labour politican was instead grilled by hosts Adil Ray and Kate Garraway.
Despite his absence, the show’s fans still felt the interview was biased and also took umbrage at the fact that they asked her about the prison system when she was ostensibly appearing via video link from Sheffield to discuss mental health services. Taking to X to complain about it, one raged: “Utterly pathetic soft interview with Yvette Cooper about the prison crisis on #GMB because she is the wife of #GMB presenter Ed Balls. Shameful.” Another simply fumed: “Pointless interview with Cooper.” A third observed: “Wasting all this time speaking to the health secretary about prisons. Typical #gmb!”
A fourth Adil penned: “Adil Ray just said, ‘Let’s talk to Yvette Cooper…’ and my instant thought was, ‘What’s the point?’ What’s the point in these ‘leaders’ that are effectively bought by commercial interests & genocidal states? Every major UK party stinks of compromise & self-interest. #GMB”.
A fourth observed: “#gmb Yvette Cooper mrs b****y balls ffs clueless clown.”
Meanwhile, a fifth suggested a way to avoid accusations of bias, stating: “@edballs should have been removed from @GMB as soon as Cooper joined the Labour Friends of for obvious reasons.”
After they probed her about the early release of prisoners, they gave Copper an opportunity to speak about her plans for mental health services in the UK.
Health Secretary Yvette Cooper is married to Good Morning Britain presenter Ed Balls (Image: Getty)
Explaining a new service, she said: “I’m here in Sheffield at the moment in the community centre. This is one of the first six that we have started and begun. There is a library behind me as part of this community centre.
“What it’s doing is bringing together mental health services and teams to work together to provide support for people who may need that mental health treatment or support in the community. So it means people can walk in and get support and advice, rather than waiting a very long time for a referral.
“It means we can provide the support early. There’s going to be 100 of these centres rolled out right across the country, and also in addition to that, 59 new emergency treatment centres for mental health.
“So rather than people going to the A and E to the main A and E, actually, they could go to a mental health emergency department instead.”