JK Rowling has revealed that she turned down two offers of a peerage following Kemi Badenoch publicly saying she would appoint the author to the House of Lords.
The Harry Potter creator, 59, was praised by Badenoch for her highly critical commentary on the rights of transgender people.
Last week, Tory leadership contender Badenoch said that her and Rowling shared a belief when it came to transgender issues and claimed that anti-trans activists had been “attacked relentlessly by all sorts of oddballs and bad people”.
When asked if she would give Rowling a seat in the House of Lords, Badenoch told Talk TV: “I would. I don’t know whether she would take it, but I certainly would give her a peerage.”
However, Rowling has revealed that it isn't the first time she has been offered a place in the House of Lords.
“It’s considered bad form to talk about this but I’ll make an exception given the very particular circumstances," she said on X/Twitter.
“I’ve already turned down a peerage twice, once under Labour and once under the Tories. If offered one a third time, I still wouldn’t take it. It’s not her, it’s me.”
It comes after Badenoch claimed in an interview that she had “managed to get Dr Hilary Cass a peerage” following her controversial review of NHS gender identity services.
The Cass review, published in April, found care had been directed by “ideology on all sides” and was based on “remarkably weak evidence”.
Rowling welcomed the findings, which led to NHS England ending the prescription of puberty blockers for children experiencing gender dysphoria.
Scotland’s only clinic offering gender services to young people followed suit.
Yet some doctors and academics both in the UK and internationally have criticised the report, expressing concern about its methodology, and the British Medical Association has announced it will carry out an evaluation of the Cass Review.
