BRAVERMAN
Sue-Ellen

• 1. Early and personal life
• 2. Legal career

Sue-Ellen Cassiana "Suella" Braverman is a British politician and barrister who has been the Attorney General for England and Wales since 2020. She has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Fareham since 2015. A member of the Conservative Party, she chaired the European Research Group from 19 June 2017 to 9 January 2018.

She was appointed as Queen’s Counsel automatically on appointment as Attorney General for England and Wales and Advocate General for Northern Ireland in February 2020, having not achieved the distinction on merit beforehand, according to one journalist  nor, according to the same journalist, had enough experience to seek such appointment. Typically, but not in this case, a barrister appointed as HM Attorney General has achieved considerable distinction in the profession before appointment. 

She has announced her intention to be a candidate in the 2022 Conservative Party leadership election.

Early and personal life

Braverman was born to Christie and Uma Fernandes, of Indian origin, who had emigrated to Britain in the 1960s from Kenya and Mauritius. Her mother was a nurse and a councillor in Brent and her father, of Goan ancestry, worked for a housing association. She was born in Harrow, Greater London, and grew up in Wembley.

Braverman 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, Uma Fernandes, 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 her pupillage at 2–3 Gray's Inn Square (now Cornerstone Barristers) and then was based at No5 Chambers in London specialising in commercial litigation, judicial review, immigration and planning law. She was appointed to the Attorney General's C Panel of Counsel in 2010.