Suella Braverman

## Sue-Ellen Cassiana "Suella" Braverman

### In Office

25th October 2022 - 13th November 2023Previously; 6th September 2022 - 19th October 2022

### Prime Minister

Theresa May
Boris Johnson
Liz Truss
Rishi Sunak

### Other Titles

Attorney General (13th February 2020 – 2nd March 2021)
Under-Secretary (9th January 2018 – 15th November 2018)

European Research Chair (19th June 2017 – 9th January 2018)

European Research Deputy Chair (20th November 2016 – 19th June 2017)

Member of Parliament for Fareham (7th May 2015 - present)

## Personal Information

### Parents

Christie Fernandes
 Uma Fernandes

### Education

Queens' College, Cambridge
Panthéon-Sorbonne University

**Sue-Ellen Cassiana** **Braverman** KC (/suˈɛlə ˈbrɑːvərmən/ *soo-EL-ə BRUH-vər-mən*; *née* **Fernandes**, born 3 April 1980) is a British politician and barrister, who served twice as Home Secretary from 6 September 2022 to 19 October 2022, and then again from 25 October 2022 to 13 November 2023. A member of the Conservative Party, she was chair of the European Research Group from 2017 to 2018 and Attorney General for England and Wales from 2020 to March 2021 and September 2021 to 2022. She became Member of Parliament (MP) for Fareham in Hampshire in 2015.

In the January 2018 cabinet reshuffle, Braverman was appointed parliamentary under-secretary of state for exiting the European Union by Prime Minister Theresa May. In November 2018 she resigned in protest against May's draft Brexit withdrawal agreement. Braverman was appointed attorney general for England and Wales and advocate general for Northern Ireland by Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the February 2020 cabinet reshuffle; she was appointed as Queen's Counsel automatically on her appointment.

Following Johnson's announcing his resignation in July 2022, Braverman stood as a candidate to succeed him in the July–September Conservative Party leadership election; she was eliminated from the ballot after the second round of voting. She subsequently supported Truss's bid to become Conservative leader, and was appointed home secretary on 6 September 2022 when Truss became prime minister. Braverman resigned as home secretary on 19 October 2022 following criticism for breaching the Ministerial Code by sending a sensitive official document to a political ally using her personal email address. Six days later, she was reinstated as home secretary by Truss's successor Rishi Sunak. She was dismissed from her post by Sunak on 13 November 2023.

## Early and personal life

Braverman was born to Christie and Uma Fernandes (née Mootien-Pillay), both of Indian origin, who emigrated to Britain in the 1960s from Kenya and Mauritius respectively. Her mother was a nurse and a councillor in Brent and her father, of Goan ancestry, worked for a housing association. Her mother was born into a Hindu Tamil Mauritian family. Braverman is the niece of Mahen Kundasamy, former Mauritian High Commissioner to London.

Braverman was born in Harrow, Greater London, and grew up in Wembley. She attended the Uxendon Manor Primary School in Brent and the fee-paying Heathfield School, Pinner, on a partial scholarship, after which she read law at Queens' College, Cambridge. During her undergraduate studies, she was chair of the Cambridge University Conservative Association. Braverman lived in France for two years, as an Erasmus Programme student and then as an Entente Cordiale Scholar, where she completed a master's degree in European and French law at Panthéon-Sorbonne University.

She married Rael Braverman in February 2018 at the House of Commons. Their first child was born in 2019 and their second in 2021.

Braverman is a member of the Triratna Buddhist Community (formerly the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order) and attends the London Buddhist Centre monthly. She took her oath of office on the *Dhammapada*.

Her mother was the Conservative candidate in Tottenham in the 2001 general election and in the 2003 Brent East by-election.

## Legal career

Braverman was called to the bar at Middle Temple in 2005. She completed pupillage at 2–3 Gray's Inn Square (now Cornerstone Barristers) but did not start tenancy there, beginning practice at the London branch of a large Birmingham set - No5 Chambers. She worked in litigation including the judicial review "basics" for a government practitioner of immigration and planning law. She was appointed to the Attorney General's C panel of counsel, the entry level, undertaking basic government cases, in 2010.

## Political career

### Conservative candidate

Braverman’s name was already on the list of Conservative parliamentary candidates at the time of the 2003 Brent East by-election, and she had to be persuaded not to seek the nomination. Her mother, Uma Fernandes, a Conservative councillor, was selected to fight the seat, and Braverman campaigned for her. During the campaign, Braverman was featured in *The Guardian* in an article titled "The road to No 10".

At the 2005 general election, Braverman contested Leicester East, finishing in second place behind Labour's Keith Vaz. She sought selection as the Conservative candidate in Bexhill and Battle, but was unsuccessful, and was eventually selected to be the Conservative candidate in Fareham. Braverman also sought election to the London Assembly at the 2012 Assembly elections and was placed fourth on the Conservative London-wide list; only the first three Conservative candidates were elected.

### Parliamentary activity

Braverman was elected to the House of Commons as the MP for Fareham in 2015 with 56.1% of the vote and a majority of 22,262. She gave her maiden speech on 1 June 2015. She has taken a particular interest in education, home affairs and justice and has written for *The Daily Telegraph*, Bright Blue, *i News*, *HuffPost*, *Brexit Central* and *ConservativeHome*.

From 2015 to 2017, Braverman was a member of the Education Select Committee and the Education, Skills and the Economy Sub-Committee. Between November 2015 and February 2016, she was a member of the Joint Committee on the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill. Braverman chaired the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on Financial Education for Young People from September 2016 to May 2017. Working with the charity Young Enterprise and the "money-saving expert" journalist Martin Lewis, she led the APPG's inquiry into the provision of financial education in schools and launched its report, *Financial Education in Schools: Two Years On – Job Done?*, which called for better financial education in schools. Braverman was also a commissioner on the Social Market Foundation Commission on Inequality in Education, a cross-party initiative examining the causes and effects of inequality in education at primary and secondary levels in England and Wales.

Braverman joined the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme in 2016, graduating from the scheme in 2017. Braverman opened a Westminster Hall debate in the House of Commons on the failings of Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust and has chaired meetings with the Trust's executives along with other MPs on the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Hampshire in which instances of poor care quality and the deaths of patients were investigated.

Braverman was a member of the panel of an inquiry, led by the think-tank British Future, to examine how the government can protect the rights of EU citizens in the UK. Braverman campaigned to leave the European Union in the 2016 EU membership referendum; a majority (55%) of votes in her constituency were for leaving. She was chair of the European Research Group, a pro-Leave group of Conservative MPs, until her promotion to ministerial office; she was replaced by Jacob Rees-Mogg. Following the 2017 general election, Braverman was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the ministers of the Treasury.

During the January 2018 reshuffle, Braverman was appointed as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Exiting the European Union. On 15 November 2018, Braverman resigned on the same day that Davis' successor, Dominic Raab, resigned as Brexit Secretary in protest at Theresa May and Olly Robbins's draft Brexit deal, which was released the day before.

In March 2019, Braverman stated in a speech for the Bruges Group that "[a]s Conservatives, we are engaged in a battle against Cultural Marxism". Journalist Dawn Foster challenged Braverman's use of the term "cultural Marxism", highlighting its anti-Semitic history and its connection to the manifesto of the mass murderer Anders Breivik. Her use of the term was initially condemned as hate speech by other MPs, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the anti-racist organisation Hope Not Hate, among other anti-racist charities. Braverman denied that the term was an antisemitic trope, saying, "We have culture evolving from the far left which has allowed the snuffing out of freedom of speech, freedom of thought. [...] I'm very aware of that ongoing creep of cultural Marxism, which has come from Jeremy Corbyn." After meeting with her later, the Board of Deputies of British Jews said in a subsequent statement that she is "not in any way antisemitic", saying it believed that she did not "intentionally use antisemitic language", while finding that she "is clearly a good friend of the Jewish community" and that they were "sorry to see that the whole matter has caused distress".

### Attorney General

In the 13 February 2020 reshuffle, Braverman was appointed as Attorney General for England and Wales and Advocate General for Northern Ireland, succeeding Geoffrey Cox who had been dismissed from government. Braverman was made QC at the time of this appointment. She was later criticised by members of the Bar Council, for her poor choices in the role.

Braverman was designated as a Minister on Leave while pregnant on 2 March 2021, shortly after the Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Act 2021 was enacted to allow this arrangement. Michael Ellis became acting Attorney General until Braverman resumed office on 11 September 2021.

### Leadership candidate

During the 2022 United Kingdom government crisis, Braverman remained a minister, though on 6 July 2022, she called for Boris Johnson to resign. She stood in the ensuing Conservative Party leadership election, but was eliminated from the race in the second round of ballots, winning 27 votes, a reduction on her previous achievement and the lowest of the remaining candidates. She then endorsed Liz Truss.

Had she succeeded in being appointed prime minister, Braverman said her priorities would have been to deliver tax cuts, cut government spending, tackle the cost of living challenges, "solve the problem of boats crossing the Channel", deliver "Brexit opportunities" and to "get rid of all of this woke rubbish".

### Home secretary first term (2022)

Braverman was appointed Home secretary in the new Truss ministry on 6 September 2022.

In October 2022, Braverman said that she would love to see a front page of *The Daily Telegraph* sending asylum seekers to Rwanda and described it as her "dream" and "obsession". The first attempted flight by the UK to send asylum seekers to Rwanda in June 2022 resulted in asylum seekers being restrained and attached to plane seats after self-harming and threatening suicide. On the matter, the UN Refugee Agency have said that the "arrangement, which amongst other concerns seeks to shift responsibility and lacks necessary safeguards, is incompatible with the letter and spirit of the 1951 Convention" in regards to the rights of refugees.

Braverman was dismissed as Home Secretary on 19 October 2022. She said this was because she had made an "honest mistake" by sharing an official document from her personal email address with a colleague in Parliament, an action which breached the Ministerial Code. Braverman was also highly critical of Truss's leadership in her resignation letter.

### Home Secretary second term (2022-2023)

On 25 October, Braverman was reappointed as the Home Secretary by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak upon the formation of the Sunak ministry. Braverman's reappointment was challenged by Labour Party MPs, Liberal Democrats, Scottish National Party MPs and some Conservatives. The Labour leader and Leader of the Opposition, Keir Starmer, raised it as the subject of his first question to Rishi Sunak at Sunak's first Prime Minister's questions on 26 October 2022. Sunak said Braverman "made an error of judgment but she recognised that she raised the matter and she accepted her mistake". Jake Berry, who was dismissed by Sunak after becoming PM, said that "from my own knowledge, there were multiple breaches of the ministerial code".

There were demands by Labour and the Liberal Democrats, as well as Conservative MP Caroline Nokes, for an inquiry into Braverman's return to the cabinet despite the alleged security breach. The government announced there will not be an inquiry into Braverman. The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee was strongly critical of the decision to reappoint Braverman. The committee stated that reappointing Braverman created a dangerous precedent. Leaking restricted material "is worthy of significant sanction under the new graduated sanctions regime (...) including resignation and a significant period out of office." The committee also stated a later change in prime minister should not allow a minister to return to office in a shorter period. "To allow this (...) does not inspire confidence in the integrity of government nor offer much incentive to proper conduct in future."

In March 2023, Braverman visited Rwanda and viewed housing which might be used by asylum seekers. The Court of Appeal judges have rendered a verdict stating that sending asylum seekers to Rwanda for claim processing is unlawful. The judges concluded that government officials were mistaken in placing their trust in unsupported guarantees from Rwanda, where it was acknowledged that inadequate procedures would be enhanced.

Braverman's comments on illegal immigration have spoken of "invasion" and on child protection from "grooming gangs" – language criticised by "Tory MPs, peers and activists", alongside international agencies and rights groups, as inflammatory, with Sayeeda Warsi calling it "racist rhetoric", and an anonymous former senior minister under Boris Johnson saying "Conservative reputation on discrimination has dropped to a new low" on Braverman's watch. A Home Office spokesperson responded that the home secretary would "not shy away from telling hard truths", a sentiment reiterated by Braverman, who said it was "not racist" to tell "plain truths", or to want to cut illegal immigration.

Downing Street meanwhile denied that the talk of "grooming gangs" was indicative of the party resorting to dog-whistle politics. In October 2022, Braverman likewise stated that it was "not racist" to want to control the UK's borders. Joan Salter, a Holocaust survivor, confronted Braverman over her rhetoric on 14 January 2023. Salter told Braverman, "When I hear you using words against refugees like 'swarms' and an 'invasion', I am reminded of the language used to dehumanise and justify the murder of my family and millions of others." Ruling on a complaint made about an article in *The Mail on Sunday* written by Braverman, Ipso said in September 2023 that her comment about British-Pakistani men's involvement in child sexual abuse gangs was "significantly misleading".

In April 2023, Braverman unveiled a proposition to house approximately 500 single adult men on *Bibby Stockholm*, a barge. The proposal was implemented in August of the same year. The announcement sparked a notable political response amongst both Labour and Conservative MPs due to the backdrop of the Home Office's escalated stringent policies targeting refugees, intended to curtail the frequency of small boat crossings amid the European migrant crisis. On 2 August 2023, the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) wrote to Braverman to request a meeting to talk about their concerns over the safety of the barge.

In July 2023, Braverman personally intervened to prevent Siyabonga Twala, a British resident who had travelled from Manchester to Istanbul for a family holiday, from returning to the UK, ordering his exclusion "on the basis of serious criminality" in relation to a cannabis offence five years previously. Siyabonga Twala's solicitors said Braverman's intervention set a "worrying precedent" for the use of exclusion order in barring people from reentry into the UK in setting "such a low bar to what is considered a serious criminal".

Following the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, Braverman said in a letter to chief constables in England and Wales: "I would encourage police to consider whether chants such as: 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free' (...) in certain contexts may amount to a racially aggravated section 5 public order offence", adding that "Behaviours that are legitimate in some circumstances, for example the waving of a Palestinian flag, may not be legitimate such as when intended to glorify acts of terrorism". She later described subsequent pro-Palestine marches during the Israel–Gaza war as "hate marches (...) chanting for the erasure of Israel from the map" containing a "large number of bad actors who are deliberately operating beneath the criminal threshold". In November 2023, in criticism of marches proposed to take place on Armistice Day, she cited "reports that some of Saturday's march group organisers have links to terrorist groups, including Hamas". Scotland's First Minister Humza Yousaf called for her resignation and accused her of "fanning the flames of division". On 13 November, she was sacked as Home Secretary amid a cabinet reshuffle.

## Political and legal positions

### Political right

Braverman stands on the right wing of the Conservative Party, is a committed supporter of Brexit, and supports sending cross-Channel migrants to Rwanda. She has said, "If I get trolled and I provoke a bad response on Twitter I know I'm doing the right thing. Twitter is a sewer of left-wing bile. The extreme left pile on is often a consequence of sound conservative values."

### British Empire

Braverman has described herself as a "child of the British Empire". Her parents, who were from Mauritius and Kenya, came to the UK "with an admiration and gratitude for what Britain did for Mauritius and Kenya, and India". She believes that on the whole, "the British Empire was a force for good".

### Free schools

Braverman was the founding chair of governors at the Michaela Community School, and supports plans to create a free school in Fareham. She sits on the advisory board of the New Schools Network, a charity which aims to support groups setting up free schools within the English state education sector.

### Rights versus responsibilities

In a December 2015 op-ed, Braverman wrote, "In essence, rights have come to fill the space once occupied by generosity." She quotes Eric Posner's theories on what the Brazilian state sees as its right to use torture by "the police in the name of crime prevention. They justify this by putting a general right to live free from crime and intimidation above their rights of those who are tortured." She closes,

> *"To correct the imbalance, perhaps we should adopt a Universal Declaration of Responsibilities and Duties, to be read in tandem with that on Human Rights? A fair, decent and reasonable society should question the dilution of our sense of duty, the demotion of our grasp of responsibility and our virtual abandonment of the spirit of civic obligation. What we do for others should matter more than the selfish assertion of personal rights and the lonely individualism to which it gives rise."*
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### Parliamentary sovereignty and international treaties

In 2020, as Attorney General, she stated the UK Government's legal position about the possible impact of the UK Internal Market Bill on the Northern Ireland Protocol:

> *"It is an established principle of international law that a state is obliged to discharge its treaty obligations in good faith. This is, and will remain, the key principle in informing the UK's approach to international relations. However, in the difficult and highly exceptional circumstances in which we find ourselves, it is important to remember the fundamental principle of Parliamentary sovereignty.*
> *Parliament is sovereign as a matter of domestic law and can pass legislation which is in breach of the UK's Treaty obligations. Parliament would not be acting unconstitutionally in enacting such legislation. This 'dualist' approach is shared by other, similar legal systems […]."*
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### Transgender matters

In an interview with *The Times*, Braverman said that schools do not have to accommodate requests from students who wish to change how others recognise their gender, including the use of the pronouns, uniforms, lavatories and changing facilities of their identified gender if it differs from their sex. She argues that, legally, under-18s are entitled to be treated only by the gender corresponding to their sex and that the "unquestioning approach" adopted by some teachers and schools is the reason different parts of the country have very different rates of children presenting as transgender. Braverman also referred to author J. K. Rowling as "a heroine" of hers.