Women should not feel pressurised into experiencing an “ideal birth”, the new health secretary, Yvette Cooper, has said, promising a root-and-branch reform of standards after several damning maternity scandals. In one of her first acts as health secretary, Cooper said she intended to re-introduce binding national maternity standards, which were dismantled under the early Conservative NHS reforms and replaced with fragmented trust-by-trust practices. View image in fullscreen Yvette Cooper, right, in 2000, while public health minister, with the social security minister Angela Eagle. View image in fullscreen Yvette Cooper, who served as foreign secretary under Keir Starmer, arriving with the then prime minister for a Nato summit in Turkey in July. Photograph: Alastair Grant/ReutersA longstanding ally of the former prime minister, Keir Starmer, and a former leadership rival of Burnham’s in 2015, Cooper said she believed the change of prime minister had been necessary.