Suella Braverman

The Right Honourable Suella Braverman KC MP
File:Suella Braverman Official Cabinet Portrait, September 2022 (cropped).jpg Official portrait, 2022
Home Secretary
Incumbent
Assumed office 25 October 2022
Prime Minister	Rishi Sunak
Preceded by	Grant Shapps
In office 6 September 2022 – 19 October 2022
Prime Minister	Liz Truss
Preceded by	Priti Patel
Succeeded by	Grant Shapps
Attorney General for England and Wales Advocate General for Northern Ireland
In office 10 September 2021 – 6 September 2022
Prime Minister	Boris Johnson
Preceded by	Michael Ellis
Succeeded by	Michael Ellis
In office 13 February 2020 – 2 March 2021
Prime Minister	Boris Johnson
Preceded by	Geoffrey Cox
Succeeded by	Michael Ellis
Minister on Leave (Attorney General)
In office 2 March 2021 – 10 September 2021
Prime Minister	Boris Johnson
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union
In office 9 January 2018 – 15 November 2018
Prime Minister	Theresa May
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Kwasi Kwarteng
Chair of the European Research Group
In office 19 June 2017 – 9 January 2018
Deputy	Michael Tomlinson
Party Leader	Theresa May
Preceded by	Steve Baker
Succeeded by	Jacob Rees-Mogg
Deputy Chair of the European Research Group
In office 20 November 2016 – 19 June 2017 Serving with Michael Tomlinson
Chair	Steve Baker
Party Leader	Theresa May
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Michael Tomlinson
Member of Parliament for Fareham
Incumbent
Assumed office 7 May 2015
Preceded by	Mark Hoban
Majority	26,086 (45.6%)
Personal details
Born	Sue-Ellen Cassiana Fernandes (1980-04-03) 3 April 1980 Harrow, London, England
Political party	Conservative
Spouse(s)	Rael Braverman (m. 2018)
Children	2
Alma mater	Queens' College, Cambridge Panthéon-Sorbonne University
Signature	Suella Braverman's signature
Website	suellabraverman.co.uk

Sue-Ellen Cassiana Braverman KC (/ˈbrævərmən/; née Fernandes, born 3 April 1980) is a British politician and barrister who became Home Secretary of the United Kingdom on 25 October 2022. She had previously held the position from 6 September to 19 October 2022 under Prime Minister Liz Truss. 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 2015.

In the January 2018 cabinet reshuffle she 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 when Truss became prime minister. Braverman resigned as home secretary on 19 October 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.

Early life and education

Braverman was born in Harrow, Greater London, and raised in Wembley. She is the daughter of Uma (née Mootien-Pillay) and Christie Fernandes, both of Indian origin, who emigrated to Britain in the 1960s from Mauritius and Kenya respectively. She is named after the character Sue Ellen Ewing from the American television soap opera Dallas which was popular at the time of her birth. Her mother, of Hindu Tamil Mauritian descent, was a nurse and a councillor in Brent, and the Conservative candidate for Tottenham in the 2001 general election and the 2003 Brent East by-election. Her father, of Goan Christian ancestry (who formerly was an Indian in Kenya), worked for a housing association. She is the niece of Mahen Kundasamy, a former Mauritian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.

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 chairman 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 studied a master's degree in European and French law at Panthéon-Sorbonne University.

Career

Braverman was called to the bar (becoming a barrister) 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 passed the New York, US bar examination in 2006, becoming licensed to practise law in the state until the licence was suspended in 2021 after she did not re-register as an attorney. She was appointed to the Attorney General's C panel of counsel, the entry level, undertaking basic government cases, in 2010.

Braverman founded the Africa Justice Foundation in 2010 alongside barristers Cherie Booth and Philip Riches.

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 (as Fernandes) was included in an article in The Guardian newspaper with title "The road to No 10".

At the 2005 general election, Braverman contested Leicester East, finishing in second place behind Labour's Keith Vaz, who won with a 15,876-vote (38.4%) majority. 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.

Braverman opened a Westminster Hall debate in the House of Commons on the failings of Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust and chaired meetings with the Trust's executives and 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 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, from May 2017 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 had been 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 stating it was a theory in the manifesto of the mass murderer Anders Breivik. Braverman's 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

File:Attorney General hosts Ukrainian Prosecutor General visit to support war crimes investigations.png

Braverman in her role as attorney general meeting prosecutor general of Ukraine Iryna Venediktova in May 2022

In the 13 February 2020 reshuffle, Braverman was appointed 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 she resumed office on 11 September 2021.

Leadership candidate

File:Sulla 4 Leader Logo.png

Logo used by Braverman's leadership bid

During the July 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 vote in the first round and the lowest of the remaining candidates. She then endorsed Liz Truss.

File:UK Conservative Leadership Ballot 2 (July 2022).png

Braverman was eliminated in round 2.

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", withdraw the UK from the European Convention of Human Rights and to "get rid of all of this woke rubbish". She also said she would suspend the UK's target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050. In August 2022, The Guardian reported that Braverman's leadership campaign had received a £10,000 donation from a company owned by the climate change denier Terence Mordaunt.

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 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. Later Amber Rudd, a former Conservative Home Secretary, criticised the plans to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda as "brutal" and "impractical".

Braverman left her cabinet position as Home Secretary on 19 October 2022. She said that her departure 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 highly critical of Truss's leadership in her resignation letter.

Second term (since 2022)

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 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.

Under the 2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies, her Fareham constituency is set to be dissolved and merged with Meon Valley to form "Fareham and Waterlooville". Her rival in the selection process was Meon Valley MP Flick Drummond. On 5 April 2023, the re-selection vote was held and Braverman won the vote by 77 votes to 54.

In July 2023, Braverman personally intervened to prevent 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. The resident'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".

Political and legal positions

Braverman stands on the right wing of the Conservative Party, was a supporter of Brexit, supports the withdrawal of the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights and supports sending cross-Channel migrants to Rwanda. She 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."

Legacy of the 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", and described herself as being "proud of the British Empire".

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 quoted 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 the rights of those who are tortured." She closed,

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.

Transgender rights

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 argued 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.

India trade deal

Braverman, who is of Indian heritage, said that she feared a trade deal with India would increase migration to the UK when Indians already represented the largest group of people who overstayed their visa.

National conservatism

In May 2023, Braverman spoke at the National Conservatism Conference in London. In her speech, she stated that immigration threatened the country's "national character", and that Britons should be trained to do the jobs where immigrants are currently employed. She also expressed opposition to what she referred to as "radical gender ideology".

Allegations of misconduct

Complaint to the Bar Standards Board

In 2022, as Home Secretary, Braverman referred to people reaching the UK by crossing the Channel in small boats as an 'invasion'. Braverman's comments attracted criticism from an 83-year-old Holocaust survivor who in January 2023 accused Braverman of using language akin to Nazi rhetoric. Braverman stood by her comments and declined to apologise, stating: "We have a problem with people exploiting our generosity, breaking our laws and undermining our system."

In response to these comments and others about sexual grooming gang members being predominantly British–Pakistani men who "hold cultural values totally at odds with British values", nine organisations—London Muslim Community Forum, Natasha Lloyd Owen and Chiara Maddocks - Co-chairs of the Society of Labour, Lawyers Crime Group, Society of Asian Lawyers, Association of Muslim Lawyers, Muslim Lawyers Action Group, Luton Council of Mosques – 23 Muslim organisations, Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, and Sunni Council of Mosques—wrote a letter to the Bar Standards Board in May 2023 about their deep concern that Braverman (a barrister before becoming an MP, and still subject to certain professional rules governing conduct despite not practising as a barrister since 2015) had breached the body's code of conduct with "racist sentiments and discriminatory narratives".

The letter urged the Board to investigate and take action against what they claim was racist and inflammatory language used by Braverman about British men of Pakistani heritage and asylum seekers, citing their view that three Bar Council code of conduct rules were breached: CD5 – behaving in a way which is likely to diminish trust and confidence, C8 – conduct which the public may reasonably perceive as undermining honesty, integrity or independence, and C12 – a breach of the instruction not to discriminate against any other person on the grounds of race, colour, ethnic or national origin or other grounds.

Legal contribution accusations

Braverman's details on the No5 Chambers website said that she "is a contributor to Philip Kolvin QC's book Gambling for Local Authorities, Licensing, Planning and Regeneration". The Observer had questioned this in 2020 and, in October 2022, The Big Issue reported Kolvin saying that she "did not make a written or editorial contribution to the book", but simply "on one occasion I asked her to do some photocopying for the book". Braverman's parliamentary office, the Home Office and No5 Chambers all declined to comment, but the claim was removed from the website after The Big Issue had enquired.

"The Secret Barrister" told The Big Issue, "For a practising barrister to include on a chambers profile something which is not merely an exaggeration but knowing false, is the type of dishonest conduct that should rightly attract the attention of the Bar Standards Board." It was later reported by Private Eye that the Bar Standards Board was investigating a complaint that she had made a "dishonest statement out of self-interest to promote her career".

The Eye also reported that her MP's website had said that she was involved "in the lengthy Guantanamo Bay Inquiry into the treatment of detainees by US and UK forces", although her name does not appear in the inquiry report, and suggested she may merely have been one of scores of lawyers who had sifted through documents.

Alleged breach of the ministerial code

In May 2023 it was reported that, following an incident where she was caught speeding by police when she was Attorney General, Braverman asked whether civil servants could arrange for her an option to take a driving awareness course as a private one-to-one session rather than the standard group course with other motorists. They refused, and reported the request to the Cabinet Office. Braverman then asked one of her political aides to assist her, who asked the course providers whether with online courses aliases could be used and whether cameras could be switched off. The providers said those options were not available.

The Liberal Democrats and Labour, which suggested the matter could be a breach of the ministerial code, called for an inquiry by the prime minister's independent adviser on ministerial interests and "ethics chief", Sir Laurie Magnus. Downing Street officials confirmed that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was to consult Magnus on whether Braverman had breached the Ministerial Code. On 24 May 2023 Rishi Sunak said that after consulting Magnus, he had decided that further investigation was not necessary, and that the incident did not constitute a breach of the Ministerial Code.

Personal life

She married Rael Braverman, a manager of the Mercedes-Benz Group who Braverman described as a "very proud member of the Jewish community", in February 2018 at the House of Commons. As of 2023 they had two children, born in 2019 and 2021. She lives in Locks Heath, Hampshire.

Braverman is a member of the Triratna Buddhist Community, formerly the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. She took her oath of allegiance as an MP on the Buddhist Dhammapada.

Honours

• She was sworn in as a member of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council on 19 February 2020 at Buckingham Palace, entitling her to the honorific prefix "The Right Honourable".
• She was appointed as Queen's Counsel (QC) on 24 February 2020.

External links

• Official website
• Profile at Parliament of the United Kingdom
• Voting record at Public Whip
• Record in Parliament at TheyWorkForYou
• Suella Braverman on Twitter
• Appearances on C-SPAN

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Mark Hoban	Member of parliament for Fareham 2015–present	Incumbent
Party political offices
New office	Deputy Chair of the European Research Group 2016–2017 Served alongside: Michael Tomlinson	Succeeded by Michael Tomlinson
Preceded by Steve Baker	Chair of the European Research Group 2017–2018	Succeeded by Jacob Rees-Mogg
Political offices
New office	Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union 2018	Succeeded by Kwasi Kwarteng
Preceded by Geoffrey Cox	Attorney General for England and Wales 2020–2021	Succeeded by Michael Ellis
	Advocate General for Northern Ireland 2020–2021
Preceded by Michael Ellis	Attorney General for England and Wales 2021–2022	Succeeded by Michael Ellis
	Advocate General for Northern Ireland 2021–2022
Preceded by Priti Patel	Home Secretary 2022	Succeeded by Grant Shapps
Preceded by Grant Shapps	Home Secretary 2022-present	Incumbent