8 2GM Saturday May 28 2022 | the times
News
Suella Braverman, the attorney-gener-
al, says JK Rowling is one of her hero-
ines. The Harry Potter author is at the
forefront of an increasingly bitter and
divisive conflict over women’s rights
and trans activism. Braverman is clear
she stands full-square behind Rowling:
“She’s a heroine. Very brave, very cour-
ageous. I’m on her side.”
In an interview with The Times, Brav-
erman goes further than any cabinet
minister to date, including the prime
minister, on one of the most sensitive
issues in modern politics, particularly
concerning schools and education.
The legislation and case law, she says,
are clear for young people with gender
dysphoria. Schools are under no obliga-
tion to “accommodate” children who
wish to change their gender. They are
under no obligation to address them by
a different pronoun or to allow them to
wear the uniform of the opposite sex.
In fact, she argues, under the Equali-
ty Act schools have a “duty” to protect
single-sex spaces, such as lavatories, for
“biological females”.
Some teachers and schools, she sug-
gests, are effectively encouraging gen-
der dysphoria by taking an “unques-
tioning” attitude. Some schools, she
claims, are failing to tell parents their
children want to change gender.
The legal position, she says, is simple.
“Under-18s cannot get a gender recog-
nition certificate, under-18s cannot le-
gally change sex. In the context of
schools it’s even clearer actually. A male
child who says in a school they are a
trans girl, that they want to be female, is
legally still a boy or a male. And they
can be treated as such under the law.
And schools have a right to treat them
as such under the law. They don’t have
to say ‘OK, we’re going to let you
change your pronoun or let you wear a
skirt or call yourself a girl’s name’.
“Equally if they say they’re non-bina-
ry they still remain legally, and physi-
cally, the sex they were born to. The
school doesn’t have to say, ‘Actually
OK, we’ll take what this child says and
we’ll change our systems and service to
accommodate this child’.”
The Equality Act, she says, has “very
important single-sex exemptions”.
Asked whether pupils who are born
male should be able to use girls’ lavato-
ries or changing facilities, she says: “I
would say to the school that they don’t
have to and that they shouldn’t. They
shouldn’t allow that child to go into
girls’ toilets. Protecting single-sex spa-
ces for biological females and biological
males is really important, particularly
in schools. There’s no duty on schools to
compromise on single-sex spaces.
From a safeguarding point of view you
can argue there is a duty on schools to
preserve single-sex spaces, and ensure
spaces are for biological females. I
would extend that to school uniforms
personally. I think the law allows
schools to do that.”
The debate is largely uncharted terri-
tory for the government. Nadhim Za-
hawi, the education secretary, is draw-
ing up guidance for schools on how to
support children with gender dyspho-
ria, with input from Braverman. This
month he told The Times that schools
should accommodate trans children
and suggested they could allow, for ex-
ample, pupils born male to use girls’ lav-
atories and changing facilities when
not in use by others. It is not a view en-
dorsed by Braverman, 42. “Some parts
of the country there are very low rates
shame. There’s a trend to start apologis-
ing, decolonising, cancelling, erasing
that part of our history. And of course,
there were some aspects which were
bad, but on the whole, I believe the Brit-
ish Empire was a force for good. Rela-
tives of mine, on my mother’s side,
fought with the British Army in World
War Two and I’m very proud of that
connection. So there’s a real admiration
and gratitude for Britain and what Brit-
ain did for my parents growing up, and
they didn’t come here with resentment
towards Britain, quite the opposite.”
The good that the empire did, she ar-
gues, gets drowned out by condemna-
tion of the slave trade. “We’ve also got
to remember that Britain ended slavery
as well and was a force of abolitionism.”
Braverman grew up near Wembley.
She went to a state school before her
parents put together enough money to
send her to a private school on a partial
scholarship. She says it represented a
significant sacrifice for her family, more
so when her father became unem-
ployed, and spurred her to apply herself.
She inherits many of her conserva-
tive values from her mother, who was a
councillor in Brent for 16 years. “Every
few years our house would be trans-
formed into a campaigning machine
with maps of polling districts and leaf-‘Rowling is a heroine. Very brave,
very courageous. I’m on her side’
Steven Swinford Political Editor lets and rosettes and people coming
and going. The buzz of elections was
something very normal and familiar,”
she says.
Braverman went on to study law at
Cambridge and gained a master’s
degree in law in Paris. She was called to
the Bar in 2005 and entered parliament
a decade later as the MP for Fareham.
“I love the cliché of the Asian doctor,
or the Asian accountant, because they
are the product of a whole generation
of pushy Asian parents who came here
with nothing who were incredibly resil-
ient, doughty, fiercely ambitious and
aspirational for their children,” she
says. “Who essentially wanted to get
their children into the professions, in
medical school or into law school.”
Before she was appointed as attor-
ney-general she was best known as one
of the 28 “Spartans” who refused to vote
for Theresa May’s Brexit deal. She
stood down from May’s government
over the deal and opposed it to the end.
For critics of Brexit the term “Spar-
tan” is used as a term of mockery but
Braverman embraces it. “It’s a badge of
honour for me,” she says. “The deal was
a sellout on sovereignty, it was a sellout
on the Union, it was a sellout on Brexit.”
Boris Johnson ultimately supported
the deal. Was he wrong to do so? “It was
so difficult,” Braverman says. “Many of
my friends changed their minds. We’re
all still Brexiteers. Boris did negotiate a
far superior deal. We were looking like
a joke on the world stage.”
That deal, however, has had big con-
sequences. Britain is poised to intro-
duce legislation that will allow it to
override swathes of the Northern Ire-
land protocol, arguing that the EU’s ap-
plication of it is hindering trade and
risking the Good Friday agreement.
Braverman has provided legal advice to
Johnson approving of the legislation,
something she refuses to discuss.
On the broad principles, however,
she is happy to comment. “The prob-
lems being caused are very clear,” she
says. “We’ve got a real threat to the
foundation of peace which is the Good
Friday agreement. The agreement de-
pends on the consent of both commu-
nities — that is totally out of balance.
Not just marginally but severely.”
Braverman says that one of the gov-
ernment’s other contentious policies,
sending migrants to Rwanda, is a “good
one”. She says: “It’s the right decision,
we need to ensure there is a deterrent
effect, a limitation of this illegal and im-
moral trade,” she says. It will, she says,
inevitably be subject to legal challenge.
“We will do all we can to defend it.”
She wants to go further on judicial re-
view and ensure that courts are not
used for “political purposes”. The gov-
ernment is still considering measures to
bar claims being made by groups that
have no direct involvement. “Frankly
the judges don’t want to be dragged in
to crowdfunded political campaigns
run by lobby groups or people with an
axe to grind against this administra-
tion,” she says.
She is forthright on the need for tax
cuts. A windfall tax, she says, is the
wrong approach. In comments made
before Rishi Sunak’s decision to intro-
duce one, Braverman says: “I wouldn’t
want to do that. I’ll be straight about
that. I don’t think that automatically
rushing to tax our way out of problems
is sustainable for our economic welfare.
Nor is it the Conservative thing to do.
We want to incentivise investment not
undermine confidence. Instinctively
I’m against it.”
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD POHLESuella Braverman, the attorney-general, has forthright views on the transgender debate and supports JK Rowling, belowof children presenting as transgender,
in some parts of the country it’s quite
worryingly high,” she says. “That must
be to do with the way teachers and local
education authorities are approaching
this subject. I think there is something
to be said for young people seeing what
their peers are doing and being influ-
enced by that. Medical professionals,
teachers should be taking a much firm-
er line. They shouldn’t take an un-
questioning approach, they
shouldn’t just take what the
child says. There could be a
whole host of other causes to
why that child might be
coming forward with
these issues. It might not
actually be that they
want to go down the
line of gender reas-
signment.”
Braverman’s forth-
right position is not
untypical of her ap-
proach to politics.
She is firmly from
the right of the Con-
servative Party, a hard-
line Brexiteer and a
prominent supporter of plans
to send cross-Channel mi-
grants to Rwanda. “I get a lotof abuse,” she says. “I get trolled. Actu-
ally for me, my barometer, it’s got to this
point where if I get trolled and I pro-
voke a bad response on Twitter I know
I’m doing the right thing. Twitter is a
sewer of left-wing bile and there’s very
little sensible, moderate voices either
way actually get drowned out. The ex-
treme left pile-on is often a conse-
quence of sound conservative values.”
Her conservatism was forged by
her family. Her mother came to
Britain from Mauritius to work as
a nurse, and her further was from
Kenya. Braverman describes her-
self as a “child of the British Em-
pire”, adding: “My parents
were born under the Brit-
ish Empire in their coun-
tries, they came to this
country with an ad-
miration and
gratitude for
what Britain did
for Mauritius
and Kenya, and
India, where we
have our ances-
tral origins. The
British Empire is
sometimes seen
very negatively,
and as a source of