Attorney general and Fareham MP Suella Braverman compares diversity training to witch hunts as she scraps equality and inclusion schemes in her department

In an article for The Daily Mail, attorney general Suella Braverman outlines why she has told her officials to ditch diversity training.

The decision came after the Tory MP was briefed on the schemes going on in the Government Legal Department, which left her ‘horrified’ to find out that hundreds of government lawyers had spent 1,900 hours of ‘taxpayer-funded time’ at diversity lectures.

The MP, who was knocked out of the Conservative leadership race on July 14, called the ‘diversity, equality and inclusion’ sector a ‘new religion’, comparing those who subscribe to that line of thinking to the ‘witch-finders of the Middle Ages’.

Mrs Braverman, the government’s chief legal adviser, argues that while such thinking is ‘harmful’ in other departments, it becomes ‘downright dangerous’ in legal cases.

She believes that by ‘emphasising difference’, diversity training prevents feelings of ‘solidarity’ and ‘support’, and instead ‘creates a sense of ‘otherness’’ by pitting ‘different groups against each other’.

The attorney general for England and Wales since 2020, Mrs Braverman also encourages other ministers to take a look at their department’s diversity programmes and ‘scrutinise the value for money they offer’ - warning that the mindset is ‘part of the problem, not the solution’.

Mrs Braverman also showed her support for Liz Truss’s bid to become leader, saying that she is ‘glad’ Ms Truss has ‘committed to scrapping diversity jobs across Whitehall’ and to challenging ‘pernicious identity politics’.